Chocolatey seems to be the king. Make sure to install this first since you can install almost all apps below with it!
Seer is a good Spotlight alternative.
I need to find a quick way to access the downloads/screenshots folder like on macOS from the dock, preferably without opening the Explorer.
Best unzip/extract tool? I guess 7zip?
To take screenshots easily like on macOS there is Lightshot, but maybe there are better ones. Also need to try the default snipping tool. Need to try PicPick too, it can do screenshooting but also nice design things like a color picker.
What to do with screen casting?
What tool is best to open PDFs and things like pictures? I want something like Preview.app from macOS and be able to do quick modifications like image crop, add text or arrows.
Need to find a good media player. Of course there's VLC. I'd love one that actually has a clean interface but that doesn't seem possible in Windows land. There is MPC-HC, MPC-BE, PotPlayer, GOM Player.
I wonder if the default media player is acceptable now, maybe after installing some codec packs?
Of course there will be nothing like Alfred. Wox seems to come close. There is also Listary, Cerebro, keypirinha, Hain, Zazu App.
Features I need: app launching, file searching, calculator, clipboard history, open specific folders with an app from a list.
Wox has a Chocolatey plugin!
To remap the caps lock key to the application launcher I could use Auto Hot Key
Need to find a color picker.
Turning Windows into an environment ready for modern development
Fork also works on Windows. Could also try GitHub Desktop and SourceTree (on Mac I hated SourceTree though due to super-ugly UI).
WinSCP or Cyberduck are interesting ones but both very ugly.
Install WSL to get bash. Make sure vscode uses bash. Create a shortcut on bash to get to my projects folder easily.
Webdev on Windows with WSL and VS Code - daverupert.com
Install Hyper™ for a better terminal. Also make sure Hyper actually uses bash. Could also install ZSH by the way.
Need to find a Sketch alternative. Heard that Figma is good.
1Password also works on Windows. Alternatives to research are Dashlane and Enpass. There should also be a good Android app. It should be easy to sync to Android.
Backblaze also works on Windows. It's cheap, but there are other good cloud backup services like Acronis True Image or IDrive. For full disk backups there is Macrium Reflect or Acronis. The default solution doesn't appear to properly work with disk encryption (source).
TickTick also has a Windows version. For Bear which I use for larger note taking I need to find an alternative. There is SimpleNote
Airmail is nearly perfect for me on Mac. Important features I need; quick switching between folders, starring emails for later, advanced search options.
Default Mail app might be worth trying out although it lacks many features. Mailbird looks great for a Windows app. eM Client looks less great but is interesting because it also offers calendar and a contacts app.
Tried out default Calendar app, it really sucks. First off it doesn't handle alerts for events as well as iCalendar and it doesn't have official FastMail support but according to this you can configure FastMail via a hack (of course it doesn't support the standard, why should you support a standard, ...........).
Chronos Calendar seems interesting but focused towards mobile use.
For Hue there seem to be many apps. I just want to be able to switch between scenes very quickly and turn off/on specific groups. Albedo can do this I think, and Huetro.
I use Final Cut Pro at the moment. Switch to Adobe again? Are there alternatives?
I use MoneyMoney at the moment, but it's Mac-only. Could switch to BunqDesktop, but perhaps there are other options.
I use MonitorControl to change the brightness of my external Dell monitors. Maybe Desktop Dimmer works.
qBittorrent is very good but very very ugly of course.
With Bitlocker it should be possible to encrypt the full C disk. Make sure it uses AES-256 and not 128.
I guess the default Windows Defender is good enough. Needs research. Maybe also install Malwarebytes. Are there things I can change in the OS to make it more secure?
- Try out /Ultimate Windows Tweaker/ first
- Remove all pre-installed games
- Disable OneDrive
- Disable Cortana
- Turn on System Restore
- Show filename extensions in Explorer
- Disable aggressive Windows updating
- Use smaller taskbar buttons
Keeping the Windows context menu clean. Many apps add things to your context menu and this can slow up the context menu and make it bloated. Need to find a good tool for this.
Install good fonts like San Francisco font and some good monospace fonts.
I like how you can use special characters in macOS like é, so this could be interesting: Mac-like Special Characters in Windows | Aaron Gustafson.
Firefox, Docker, Adobe stuff, Zeit Now, Spotify, Skype, TeamViewer, Telegram, TickTick, Plex Media Player, WhatsApp, Slack
Things that are going to be painful and are not really fixable;
- Cannot build apps for iOS anymore.
- Apps are uglier in Windows.
- If I ever want to switch to an iPhone I won't get the benefits of having macOS + iOS.
- The many confusing sorts of terminals (Bash on WSL, the default command prompt, PowerShell).
- All those goddamned. pre-installed apps keep coming back.
- Freedom to choose whatever hardware I like
- Games, games, games!