Winaero Tweaker / O&O Shut Up ++
I watch a lot of YouTube videos on tech-related stuff and learned about two different applications to tame Windows' incessant app serving and user-data collection: Winaero Tweaker, and O&O Shut Up++. As a bonus I suppose, these both offer a number of features that quiet down a number of Windows' annoying habits as well and can bring back some features that Windows doesn't still use but still contains for some reason. Both these programs work well with Windows 10 and 11.
As dangerous as it is, one or both of them can stop Windows Update so it stops frequently interrupting you with messages to reboot now or snooze for a few minutes or another time--which means at the same busy time the next day, and it just stops forcing you to update. Windows Update has become very involuntary since Windows 10. And I think the automatic download of the update is stopped as well.
However to mitigate the dangers of not keeping updated, I personally set an alarm on my phone to go off once a month, reminding me to turn Windows Update back on so I can update at my leisure rather than at Windows dictation. It does take more effort to update because turning this option on and off means you need to reboot the computer, but it now no longer irritates me countless times before I'm ready and then forces it on me at a bad time.
I am a big fan of learning correct principals and governing myself and my things. It seems to me that in the name of convenience and protection, Microsoft allows you to be ignorant about proper usage but forces proper usage on you. Since they can't know when is best and most appropriate for each individual case, they force these conveniences on you, and forcing it is where they go wrong.
As a result we now have tools such as Winaero and O&O Shut Up, which could potentially create a positive feedback loop, if it hasn't already. Windows does already reset your selections for Winaero and Shut Up whenever it gets the chance like during Windows updates, so be mindful of that, however I think both programs also allow you to export selection sets so re-enabling them to the exact specifications you took all that time to choose isn't just lost forever.
Winaero also offered the capacity to snag the lock screen images if you liked them, and you can add various buttons to the right-click context menu. This is the menu you usually use to create a new folder or copy or paste. I had the option for example of adding features I use constantly such as 'Bluetooth', 'Display Settings', 'Personalize', 'Control Panel', 'Power Options', 'Snipping Tool', and 'Windows tools'. There's a number of options like these. I love the one that stops the Start menu from searching on the web when you're searching for something on the computer. But to see all of them you have to try them out because the list is exhaustive in both programs.
Windows Battery Percentage Icon App
But I do wish to point out a problem that I think Winaero or Shut Up likely caused. I use them both on my laptop and I also keep a close eye on my laptops battery so I don't have to carry my bulky power bank everywhere I go. If I went to the library alone for example and had to keep getting up to leave my table just to come back and continue on the laptop, I will bring my laptop with me to look at books or go to the bathroom because I don't want it to get stolen, but this large power bank is a lot harder to do this with. So I wanted a way to keep an easier eye on battery life than just that tiny indicator on the taskbar that could be 50% or 30% and you'd never be sure unless you specifically went those few extra steps to check. This needs to be more like checking my watch while focusing on other things rather than changing everything I'm doing to go through a series of clicks and unreliably hovering my mouse over a tiny icon to see a percentage of remaining battery life.
This is when I discovered a handy little Microsoft App Store Application called Battery Percentage Icon.
Windows App Store Malfunction
I was rushing to go check it out and was stopped by the Microsoft App Store not updating and just freezing as a partially loaded window. I thought for sure this meant having to turn off features in Winaero Tweaker and or Shut Up, which could be tedious to find if I had to reboot every time I thought I found it, try it, and reboot to turn it back on again. I started going and decided to google what to do when the App Store doesn't work and discovered an interesting way to fix the problem (I think without touching Winaero or Shut Up--I don't know because I did already turn a bunch of things on and off to see).
So if you're in the scenario where the Microsoft App Store isn't working for one reason or another, including opening or downloading an app, you can right-click on the start menu button, and at the top is 'Apps and Features'. This is also where you would go to uninstall a program or repair it. But when you click on Microsoft App Store, there's a third option written in blue type face: 'Advanced Options'.
When this new window appears, you may have to scroll to the bottom and there are two buttons one above the other, Repair, and Reset. I almost clicked Repair because I don't immediately notice important details about what I'm looking at unless I intentionally focus on them. I clicked Reset and a progress bar appeared, took about ten or twenty seconds and the App Store problem was solved.
However, as an update, this problem came back and I reset the app store multiple times, rebooted, then updated and rebooted, and found something online that said that the thing that trips this the most is when Windows Update is unable to check for updates. So I checked Windows update and just as I shortly thereafter discovered, it was Winaero Tweaker that I had set to stop Windows Update rather than both that and O&O Shut Up, so I turned off the Windows Update restriction, I might have reset the app store application for good measure, and it worked. So it appears to me I will have to turn that toggle switch off in Winaero Tweaker every time I want to download an app which I don't anticipate being very common.
On to the next. I finally looked up Battery Percentage Icon and didn't even bother looking at it, I just installed it so I could just see for myself how it worked. Installed in less than a minute, and nothing about the usual battery icon actually changed. But if you click the upward facing arrow on the right side of the taskbar near the clock and a few other icons, a small box will appear with a number of icons such as Safely remove hardware', 'Bluetooth', or 'Microsoft Defender' and any other driver or program that may stick itself in there. There was a new icon in this box, and I was able to move it outside of the box and next to the other mini-cons by the clock, and it's a simple icon that just displays a number. That number is the remaining battery life percentage. To see it quickly I only have to press the windows key and then again to make it disappear. I think this may be good enough for me.
Power Configuration / Battery Report
However, in my search for just such a solution, I also discovered that there is a way to get very detailed information about your windows laptops battery. This could be useful if you want to know the health of the battery and everything you've done to it in terms of usage and amounts of charge, and all sorts of things. It's a bit tedious to retrieve but still useful and not necessarily a super common thing to look at like your wristwatch.
There are many ways to open the command prompt but I press the windows key so the start menu appear and I just start typing from there. People get all particular and select 'Run', which I find these days to be totally unnecessary.
Skip a step and just press the windows key, the start menu appears and type whatever you're looking for such as 'control panel', 'uninstall program', 'settings', 'Bluetooth', pick your poison.
In this case you'll type 'Command Prompt' and a convenient feature is that you really only need to type the first few letters before it appears. Type 'com' and Command Prompt appears. And next to the Command Prompt selection, another menu appears offering a number of options such as to add Command Prompt as a tile on the start menu, or you can specifically select 'open' or in this case, to get this detailed readout about your battery, you'll select 'Run as Administrator'. Administrator is pretty much a wall behind which a number of features and options are locked to keep malicious or ignorant users from messing up the computer or accessing things on a computer that doesn't belong to them. Running in administrator mode unlocks these if you're logged in as the administrator. If not, I believe you simply enter the admin password.
Command Prompt in administrator mode opens, type "powercfg /batteryreport" and enter.
The computer immediately dumps the info into an HTML file on the C drive, and then the command prompt draws a line of text under your command, telling you where to retrieve this file. When you find it, click on it, and the report opens in your internet browser.
iTunes App for Windows
I have one more thing I also discovered today that could potentially make life easier. There is an alternative to installed iTunes as a standalone desktop program, you can install it in the Microsoft App Store. Not to make the Microsoft App Store sound like the answer to ever problem, but when I discovered it I was curious why I would want to install it out of the App Store. I discovered there are a few reasons to do so. And there are some potential benefits to the centralization of Apps from app stores. In Apples case, with their app store, no app is distributed that doesn't meet certain specifications. They have to play nice, they can't be malware in disguise or whatever. There are also shortcomings. The centralization in Apples case also means Apple gets by default 30% of any revenue any app makes and there's no legal way around this. They've been hashing it out in court the past few years and Apple wins every time last I checked.
Amazon Alternative (Aside)
Normally I wouldn't care but if you appreciate the work the developers put into the product, you might want to go another route if one is available. For instance, on Linus Tech Tips Wan show recently, Linus discussed with Luke and the viewers why you should consider avoiding purchasing from Amazon. They didn't say you shouldn't, it's your choice. But if for whatever reason you don't want to shop at Amazon, which they laid out a few reasons, you need an alternative these days as brick and mortar stores just don't offer selection and not even all types of products anymore. And then they discussed how Luke gets around this since he has been anti-Amazon for a while now. I really wanted to hear his answer because I'm not a fan of New Egg and they just don't offer everything like Amazon does.
Luke said that he will use Amazon's search engine to find products and read about them and read purchaser feedback since Amazon is actually really good at that and their search engine is really good. But he'll just use it for that. When he finds a product he's interested in, he'll buy it from somewhere else, and sometimes he'll buy it directly from the manufacturer.
I just discovered that if I buy a subwoofer from SVS Sound and want to try a number of them, they offer a 45-day trial where you can return it without any hitches or re-stock fees or whatever, you can try it in your living space you intend to use it in with the exact configuration of your room and furniture and everything, and then simply return it if dissatisfied and you get all your money back and you can even buy another one and this doesn't negatively affect their bottom line somehow. But they only do this trial program on the condition that you buy it directly from them.
If I bought it off Amazon for example, Amazon would charge the retailer SVS Sound, or whoever the retailer is, a return fee which does hurt the retailers or developers bottom line, similarly to how Apple usurps a 30% chunk of money for every game or in-game purchase. Retailers and Developers don't want to raise their prices because then people won't want to spend their money, so they have to eat the 30% bite out of their profit margin. Cost of accessing the all too important Apple market-share of customers. And plus, users would be mad at these developers if they didn't offer Apple IOS app access. Imagine only being able to use something like Twitter or play Angry Birds on Android but not Apple. No one's first complaint is going to leveled at Apple, and the ignorant will likely just blame the developer.
iTunes App for Windows Continued
Well, back to the iTunes Microsoft app store application, it downloads and installed faster than the traditional standalone desktop application, it's seamless and unattended, no requirement to click through wizards, and a feature I read repeatedly was: no need to reboot after installation. You can also easily push the app store iTunes to all computers on your Microsoft account--which I have no idea what that means. I would assume similarly to Spotify, it meant the library and controls sync from one device running the program to the other or something like that but this is a locally run application, not an online one such as Spotify.
Uninstalling the iTunes app may be more difficult than the standalone version. But updates to iTunes are done through the Microsoft app store, so once again, no reboot. It also doesn't include resource intensive bloatware such as Apple Software Update, Bonjour, and other background stuff. ElcomSoft does the article I got this all from. But to finish summarizing, it can be used with Apple devices, but when you plug it in for the first time, Windows Update will install a driver for it, so it's a bit different from just using the standalone iTunes that way. There's also some differences in file paths.
How to Remove an accidentally added word from Google Dictionary
In the process of writing this, I accidentally added "WInaero" to my dictionary in Blogger without realizing that the 'I' was capitalized, so all my other uses of the word in this blog were still underlined red. I don't want this getting corrected to an incorrect typing every time. So I had to figure out how to fix it. I've been using Google Docs for many years now and ran into this problem already and figured out how to fix it by going to tools, grammar, and then a selection for the dictionary and it allows you to add or remove words from there.
Although Blogger is closely related to Google Docs, the layout is slightly different in that there are no menus across the top. Everything Blogger thought you'd need is spread across the top toolbar and that's it. I had a hair-brained idea to go into my Google Docs for this account, open a document and see if "WInaero" was added to the dictionary and there wasn't anything there.
I discovered however this video that gave a fancy keyboard shortcut to open Google Chrome Settings and fix the problem from there but to make things simple to understand, just go to Google Chrome settings, which you can access by clicking the three stacked dots in the upper-right corner of the browser, then go to settings, then on the left-pane select Languages, and select Customize Spell-Check. From there you can add or remove words from the dictionary.
This has been Truncat3d 00000000111100010100110______________end of line
