Open the Applications folder, by typing shell:AppsFolder into the Windows Explorer address bar or the Run dialog.
Run this in PowerShell:
(Get-WmiObject win32_SystemEnclosure).SerialNumber
ScreenshotIndexHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
Personalization if it doesn’t already existPersonalization key, create a new DWORD value called NoLockScreen set to 1Just pipe it to clip, e.g.
echo "ok this is epic" | clip
what if you
wanted to delete a file
but Windows said
This action can’t be completed because the file is open in another program
Now you should be able to do whatever you wanted to with said file
The Power User Menu is located at %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\WinX. Its subfolders (named Group1, Group2, etc.) correspond to the groups of shortcuts separated by horizontal bars. The lower the number, the lower it appears on the menu. You can add and remove groups, and numbers don’t have to be consecutive.
Shortcuts that get added will be ignored unless they have a 4-byte hash (of data that includes application path, arguments, and “do not prehash links. this should only be done by the user.”). There’s a command-line tool called hashlnk [executable] [source] to add this hash to a shortcut.
Shortcuts are listed in alphabetical order of their filenames. However, this can be different from the filename shown in File Explorer. The desktop.ini file in group folders can set display names that show in both File Explorer and the Power User Menu, in the format filename=Display Name. You can also customize the display name using the shortcut’s comment field. This overrides desktop.ini for the name that gets displayed in the Power User Menu, but won’t affect what’s displayed in File Explorer.
The Power User Menu, like much of Windows, supports access keys, which are keys you can press to activate a menu item, indicated by underlined letters in the label. To add an access key to your shortcut, add & before the letter you wish to be the access key in either desktop.ini or the shortcut comment. If more than one shortcut in the Power User Menu (across groups) shares the same access key, pressing the access key will toggle between them instead of launching (which you can do with Enter instead).
In order to see any changed you make to the Power User Menu shortcuts, you will need to restart explorer.exe, which is easy enough to do with Task Manager or PowerShell:
Stop-Process -Name explorer
Navigate to %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Spelling and edit the Default.dic file under the appropriate language.
On:
Set-ItemProperty -Path 'Registry::HKU\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Keyboard' -Name "InitialKeyboardIndicators" -Value "2"
Off:
Set-ItemProperty -Path 'Registry::HKU\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Keyboard' -Name "InitialKeyboardIndicators" -Value "0"
Start tiles for desktop apps are defined in appname.VisualElementsManifest.xml, where appname is the filename your tile points to, without the extension. This works for appname.exe but also things like appname.txt or whatever you want. Store it next to the shortcut target. If there are any errors in the XML, the entire file is ignored.
The XML looks like this:
<Application xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<VisualElements
BackgroundColor="#FF0000"
ForegroundText="light"
ShowNameOnSquare150x150Logo="on"
Square70x70Logo="path\to\something.png"
Square150x150Logo="path\to\something.png"
/>
</Application>
All attributes are required except Square150x150Logo and Square70x70Logo.
BackgroundColor also applies to the background of the application icon shown in All Apps. It can be an RGB hex string or one of these predefined constants:
ForegroundText is either “light” or “dark”
ShowNameOnSquare150x150Logo is either “on” or “off”
Tile image constraints:
To see the new tile, update the shortcut file. Changing its date modified is enough:
(ls "$env:ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\appname.lnk").LastWriteTime = Get-Date
System applications don’t provide a Compatibility tab in their properties window and ignore keys in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers.
The easiest approach to overriding DPI scaling is to make a new subkey HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\executable.exe, where executable.exe is the filename of the executable (duh). Add a DWORD value called dpiAwareness with the data 0, and Windows will now scale the application. This registry key is primarily for attaching a debugger to an executable no matter how it’s run, but it can change a few other aspects of how the executable runs like Exploit Guard mitigation options or, thankfully, DPI scaling.
This will apply to every executable with that filename, so in the rare case that doesn’t work out for you, you can use an external application manifest. First, you’ll want to find the old manifest, which can be easily done by opening the executable in a text editor. The manifest is embedded as plain text so it’s easy to spot:
□M□U□I□<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<!-- Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation -->
<assembly
xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1"
xmlns:asmv3="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3"
manifestVersion="1.0"
>
<assemblyIdentity
version="5.1.0.0"
processorArchitecture="amd64"
name="Microsoft.Windows.Help.HH"
type="win32"
/>
<description>Microsoft HTML Help Executable</description>
<trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
<security>
<requestedPrivileges>
<requestedExecutionLevel
level="asInvoker"
uiAccess="false"
/>
</requestedPrivileges>
</security>
</trustInfo>
<asmv3:application>
<asmv3:windowsSettings xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2005/WindowsSettings">
<dpiAware>true</dpiAware>
</asmv3:windowsSettings>
</asmv3:application>
</assembly>
Copy the manifest into an XML file called filename.exe.manifest and change the <dpiAware> tag to false. Save it next to the original executable.
In order for Windows to recognize the external manifest, open HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SideBySide. Make a new DWORD value called PreferExternalManifest with the data 1.
Or if you’re feeling more adventurous, you could skip PreferExternalManifest and use a tool like Resource Hacker to overwrite the embedded application manifest directly.