Windows 10 recently reached its end of life and I finally upgraded the last PC I had running Windows 10 to Windows 11. Despite how long I’ve been using Windows 11 on another PC, I still found the change a bit jarring. These apps made the transition a bit easier.
Windhawk
Changing operating systems is never a completely smooth process, and if you’ve just upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11 because Windows 10 reached end of life, you’re probably reeling from some of the differences.
That is where Windhawk comes in. Windhawk is an open-source program that features a library of customizations that you can apply to your PC to change how it looks and functions.
As an example, if you don’t like the Windows 11 Start Menu, you can change it to very closely resemble the one from Windows 10, or any other number of options.
If you dislike the Windows taskbar in general, you can completely redesign it so that it resembles the dock on macOS, or the taskbar from Plasma.
Windhawk has literally hundreds of different “mods” you can apply to your system to make it your own.
Whether you’re dissatisfied with some of Windows 11’s changes, or if you just like to tinker, Windhawk is a great app to have around.
Microsoft PowerToys
In many ways, Microsoft PowerToys is the Swiss Army Knife of Windows applications. PowerToys includes more than two dozen different that do everything from provide a color picker to Command Palette, which is like macOS’s Spotlight Search.
Best of all, Microsoft is constantly adding new utilities to it as time goes on.
Since most of the tools are aimed at productivity or improving on native Windows features, PowerToys is an essential program for anyone that uses Windows on a regular basis.
NanaZip
ZIPs, RARs, 7Zs, and other archival file formats are unavoidable if you regularly download things off the internet.
NanaZip is a fork of the popular software 7-Zip,which allows you to create, open, or modify archive files. It offers a modern interface that meshes nicely with Windows 11’s aesthetic, integration into Windows 11’s new right-click context menu, and support for pretty much every archival file format out there.
VSCodium
Notepad is fine for a lot of basic editing, but if you need something that can use plugins to make it more flexible, look no further than VSCodium.
VSCodium is a fork of VS Code, Microsoft’s extremely popular source code editor. The only major difference between the two is that VScodium has had telemetry, which cannot be disabled in VS Code, removed. Otherwise, the two are basically identical.
That means VSCodium gives you access to VS Code’s extensive library of plugins that make it so capable that it basically passes for an integrated development environment.
Any time I need to do anything more complicated than edit one line of a text file, VSCodium is my go-to app.
Joplin
Joplin is an open-source note-taking app, a bit like Google Keep or Obsidian.
I use it constantly in both my personal and professional life to keep my thoughts and to-do lists organized. Best of all, I self-host my own little Joplin server on a Raspberry Pi 0, so that all of my notes and diagrams are synchronized and private.
The whole thing only took about an hour to get up and running, and in the months I’ve been using it, I’ve had no problem.
Joplin also supports a healthy number of extensions, if you’re looking for some extra functionality.
BitWarden
There is a password and card manager built into every browser these days, and both Android and iOS have integrated password managers as well. However, I wanted a solution that works seamlessly between all of my devices, whether they’re running Windows 11, Linux, or Android.
That is where BitWarden comes in. BitWarden is a free and open-source password manager that supports pretty much every operating system out there. It can store all of the common types of credentials you might need, and if you’re willing to pay $10 per year to support the company, you can also get a 2FA code generator integrated into the app as well.
I’ve used BitWarden for a long time now on all of my devices, and it was something I installed almost immediately after freshly upgrading to Windows 11. All of my passwords (and credit cards) were instantly available, which made getting everything else set up to my liking a bit less tedious.
If those aren’t enough, don’t worry—there are a ton of other great open-source apps you can install on Windows 11. You can also replace OneDrive with a more privacy-friendly alternative, though it isn’t open-source.