Ask Lemmy

Turn on dark mode if it exists

Make Microsoft Windows show filename extensions.

Whenever I'm forced to use windows, show file extensions and show hidden files.

Disabling the absurdity of 12-hour clock with am/pm, which bizarrely often is the default for no rational reason whatsoever.

On both Windows and Android I go in and remove all of the bloatware and disable all of the tracking. I also turn off all of the various communications 'features' that are to let devices talk other devices.

I turn off autocorrect on anything that offers it. Mostly my android phone, but also on LibreOffice or whatever.

I also turn off all auto-capitalize, auto-punctuation, etc. When coding, I also hate auto-indent. If I want something indented, I'll hit tab.

In short, when I put in text, I want my computing devices to get exactly what I explicitly input and nothing else.

I also took out the fuse that powers the Starlink connectivity in my Subaru because Subaru's privacy policy says they'll record any audio in the cabin they damned well please with no notice or consent (except insofar as existing in the cabin constitutes "consent" because their legal department says so) and send those recordings back to the mothership to use in any way they see fit.

The motion smoothing on any modern TV

Motion Blur, Chromatic Aberration, Film Grain, and, depending on the game, Depth of Field must be disabled before New Game is ever pressed. All into videos/logos must be skipped. And, when applicable, I usually need to force the game to display PS buttons (or even use the triggers and gyro) because most games only detect the DualSense when it's physically plugged in.

"Natural scrolling" or whatever it's called with track pads on laptops where the scroll goes the opposite way your fingers are moving. I don't know why that's the default, it makes no sense.

I enable dark mode on anything that has it.

Terminal apps: I make the cursor non-blinking.

Lemmy: Hide seen posts.

those 900 partners that respect your privacy

'privacy' sandbox

music-ambient sounds balance

dynamic range specially on movies

frame generation

• disable auto-rotate
• enable dark mode
• increase keyboard repeat rate
• decrease keyboard repeat delay time
• increase mouse/trackpad sensitivity
• decrease idle to suspend time

The list is huge but those are the main things I do not need to install anything to change. They are important to me because I hate slow navigation.

Every time I get a new laptop I have to disable "natural" scrolling. Down should be down, dang it.

I turn off sounds. I hate computers that whoosh when I do something with windows, beep for no apparent reason, click when something else happens.

Enable y-axis look inversion. Because which way was "normal" and "inverted" hadn't been standardized when I started gaming and that's what I learned.

Screen brightness, dark mode, night light, if it's a mobile device then Airplane mode.

Lock down permissions to what is actually necessary to function, then expand permissions as i feel they need them.

Turning off motion blur and increasing field of view when a game has first person POV. Guaranteed motion sickness for me if I don't adjust each.

aesthetics and UI. e.g. this is what my GIMP looks like:

Volume goes waaaay down immediately. Then if it has motion blur, that goes all the way away from me.

on every new android phone i go to developer options and change animation scaling 0.5x, makes the phone feel much quicker

Dark mode and switch language to English (unless the thing is originally German) not least because it's much easier to find support in English.

Make the cursor larger and give it higher contrast.

UT2004: modify the setting to make it work with modern computers: https://quake.blog/configuring-unreal-tournament-2004-for-modern-windows.html#mcetoc_1g0te50f1iu - Then you need to update the settings to the new fan master server: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2902411820

Work makes me use a Mac, and the main setting I always want to change is the power state to off.

Serious answer though, motion blur in games, ick. I also usually turn off audio normalisation and max out the quality settings for streaming audio apps

I change the WASD key bindings to ASDF (D = forward). It's more natural for a typist and makes a greater number of adjacent keys accessible.

Invert Y-Axis

On older android devices, I immediately enable developer mode so I can enable "force GPU rendering". You'd be surprised how much of a difference it can make when games are unoptimized and don't use the GPU to render anything. For some reason, this setting was removed from newer versions of android.

Usually screen brightness. Why does everyone else want to burn out their eyes?

Stickykeys

About a hundred settings on a computer.

First step of playing any and every computer game is immediately going to resolution.

This is a bit niche but is the first thing that sprung to mind: I strongly dislike the Ubuntu font family. It's one of the first things I remove from Mint when I reinstall.

I don't use the default Cinnamon look either, and picked one that looks even more like Windows 7, which is what I was using before I switched. Now it 's just a case of old habits dying hard, I guess. The icon set I use is blue though. Way better than Windows' yellow or Mint's default of green, IMO.

Dark mode? Check? Custom shell prompt? Check. Old school Minecraft grass block icon because the creeper one is awful? Check. Shell aliases, ~/bin dir and custom keybinds? Check.

More generally, there are a few websites that store what ought to be user-attached session-spanning settings in short-lived cookies. That means that certain things go back to defaults when I restart the browser, even though my login persists. Grumble, grumble, etc.

Disable the "tap to click" function on laptop touchpads.

Language. I can understand English with no problem, but I prefer Spanish if available.