Windows 10 “Developer Mode” | Hacker News Reader

Windows 10 “Developer Mode”

hanselman.com

127 pointsgokhan81 comments

There are so many annoying if not dangerous default settings (like hiding known file extensions, virus.pdf.exe appears as "virus.pdf") that like many people I have scripts to do that. Microsoft would help me more by making the system more scriptable (try setting the sound mode to No Sound in script!).

In case you just want to disable all sound, in Powershell.

Get-Service -Name Audiosrv | Stop-Service -Force

Windows is quite scriptable, it is just a matter of knowning the right knobs.

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2013/03/...

I do not think this turns off the windows sounds. It shuts down all audio, including non OS sounds. I just want to get rid of the annoying click noises and beeps.

There is a registry setting that sets the control panel to no sound but it has no practical effect. The only suggestion I found that works is to delete the wav files, but that's kind of messy

Open the volume mixer and set "System Sounds" to 0?

I can also open the sound control panel and set windows to no sound.

We are discussing about automating changing the default settings of windows. Not of how to change them manually through the UI.

All of the Windows shell supports UI automation, so if you run into corner cases like this that aren't scriptable, you can just use PowerShell to automate the clicks.

Is this a thing you have to do often enough that its worth bothering to automate? I'd set it that way once, and its done, never have to touch it again.

The more inexplicable thing is why the modern/metro/universal/whatever-it-is-this-week apps don't show up in the volume mixer at all, and you have to rely on third-part tools like EarTrumpet to tweak them when they are being obnoxious.

"Open and manually do" != "run powershell script to do"

This is a discussion for Developers who want to automate... manually clicking stuff is not that answer.

I see, so not as easy as I thought.

> try setting the sound mode to No Sound in script!

You can do this with a .reg file.

Just need to set everything in:

HKCU/AppEvents/Schemes/Apps/.Default/[Sound Name]/.Current/(Default) to null.

Easiest way is just to set "No Sound" on an example user, then Export the entire .Default tree, you can then re-import the .reg file into a different user and have no sound on there too.

> You can do this with a .reg file.

Which doesn't take effect until after a reboot. I think OP was wanting a scripted way to disable sound at runtime.

The method set out above is identical to how the Sound Control Panel applet works behind the scenes. So it is technologically identical to setting it via the UI.

As to if it requires a logout: In my experience, no, but there may be edge cases (e.g. non-OS software is also in the sound scheme, like Visual Studio and Skype for Business).

If people want to investigate further, spin up Process Monitor, and set the filter to only display rundll32.exe then set sound profiles in the Sound Control Panel applet (mmsys.cpl).

> There are so many annoying if not dangerous default settings (like hiding known file extensions, virus.pdf.exe appears as "virus.pdf") that like many people I have scripts to do that.

Are they still doing that? I would have thought that people would have realized what a horrible, horrible idea this was by now and rolled it back. Amazing.

rem Delete Windows Sounds (Permanently)

reg delete "HKCU\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps" /f

Having left the Windows ecosystem 7 years ago or so, I couldn't be more confused these days when sporadically having to use it. For the reasons mentioned here: all power user features are burried. Though it's very debatable if full paths and hidden files should be that much tucked away to begin with.

All successful desktop operating systems tend to cater for the use cases of the common man.

Those people that don't even know what save means and scatter files across all devices in the locations suggested by the applications, using whatever was suggested as default name.

These are the people that macOS, Windows, Ubuntu/GNOME, browser based OS cater for.

I share the same feeling every time I have to dig into Chrome or Firefox settings, specially on Canary.

...and then we have plenty of idiots who don't know how the world works and think magically, because they were always isolated from OS internals, how the electricity works, how combustion engines work, etc.

I understand that you don't think computers should be effectively reduced to becoming 'black boxes' to most people, but I wouldn't necessarily agree that the simplification and abstraction of operating systems to average joes isn't exactly a bad thing. It's been happening for a very long time and I would think some of those advancements - inteded for the convenience of these 'average joes' - ended up gladly used by developers anyway. I feel it would be wrongful to call the wider audience 'idiots,' - these average joes might not be so average after all and have special understanding in fields that I don't.

Another thing is not just handling adults, but younger people. Of course there are some kids that may take a keen interest in OS internals, but then there are those who will keenly take advice they see on the internet to delete System32, so there's the need for some degree of 'safety'. Although I suppose I'm extrapolating a little, as it's pretty easy to shoot yourself in the foot in most OSes nowadays anyway, in spite of the default protections Windows/macOS offers.

> I feel it would be wrongful to call the wider audience 'idiots,' - these average joes might not be so average after all and have special understanding in fields that I don't.

My opinion is that the average Joes and Janes are not idiots. We're just turning them into idiots. They're much smarter than the industry practice would give them credit for. Ask them to learn something, and they will. Just that nobody today wants to expect learning from people. Everything is supposed to be so simple, that it can be mastered in 5 seconds of initial exposure. Of course this goal isn't possible except by dumbing the thing down so that there's nothing your product can do that can't be mastered in 5 seconds.

You have a good point about abstraction - it isn't a bad thing. We reduce insane amounts of complexity to the level a human mind can handle by layering abstractions on top of more abstractions. But the particular example of "features" like hiding file extensions or full paths is something else. It's creating a second, disconnected set of user-facing abstractions that obscure the real ones. The OS is literally lying to you in an attempt to make itself "less scary", but in the process taking away your chances of building a working mental model.

Average Jane and Joe aren't dumb, they can figure stuff out. Just look at anyone who ever did anything with accounting - they're all probably Excel whizzes. Your random teenager can likely hack the Steam client in and out. People can learn stuff when they're expected to. They're not dumb. We're making them dumb though.

> Of course there are some kids that may take a keen interest in OS internals, but then there are those who will keenly take advice they see on the internet to delete System32, so there's the need for some degree of 'safety'.

Honestly, that's how you learn. In today's age of cloud-backup-everything, there's little pain and all gain when a kid bricks the OS and has to figure out how to reinstall it from scratch.

I often imagine a dystopian future where the only children interred in software engineering are the children of software engineers, because they are the only people who'll have full access to their machines, or use anything other than glorified read only devices like tablets.

I'm sure we could find a subset of human knowledge that you are not familiar with, and also a group of people who are willing to call you and idiot because of it.

Of course we can, but it's not a field I interact with daily, it's not a fundamental thing in my life, and I don't think about how it operates as a magic that just happens.

They don't know because they don't want to know.

And they willing to pay (by money or by privacy) for the products that allow them to continue not knowing.

That's why they all kind of suck.

I mean, there's a tradeoff - by catering to the use cases of the common man, you're limiting them to your interpretation of what the common man's use cases are. Computers are tools for creative problem solving - limit them too much, and you're literally taking away almost all the reasons to have one.

I particularly dislike ideas like "hide full path of folders" or hiding extensions for known file types - because it's in fact confusing the common man in a misguided attempt to help them. The filesystem and the way the OS interacts with it is a set of abstractions. Hierarchical folders and associating files to programs via name extensions isn't that hard to grasp. But when you obscure that abstraction, paper over it with some nice display features, you're taking away the ability of a common man to ever understand what's going on. When before one could be expected to maybe figure out a mental model for those things, now it's close to impossible - because the OS is lying or refusing to divulge essential information.

So I actually agree with dozzie's parallel comment. By treating users like idiots, we're turning them into idiots. And since "pros" are a market niche, we're literally turning mainstream computing into toys for idiots. It's a waste of potential, IMO.

>>Hierarchical folders and associating files to programs via name extensions isn't that hard to grasp.

Actually a lot of people seem to struggle with it, I used to run training courses on a product that had a tree based configuration. As soon as you got beyond a basic list and started building a hierarchy half the class would fade away.

Compare it to some trees they know from real life. Company organizational chart. School organizational chart (principal has teachers who have children). Country organizational chart (president over ministers over ...).

Trees are not a trivial abstraction, but they aren't also hard.

Well I don't do it any more but at the time I tried lots of different approaches, some people just don't seem to have the mental capability to handle the abstractions.

That's amusing actually. Average HN reader just cannot imagine an average people cannot handle abstractions at all.

If an average human couldn't handle abstractions at all, their brain would explode somewhere around being 2 years old. Everyone, even the biggest luddite, deals with shit ton of abstractions every day. The brain can handle it. The ego, quite often, cannot - and herein lies the role of a good teacher.

> half the class would fade away.

They didn't care, but every one understands it. Then there is also the basic belief that everything to do with a computer is hard, so they've already decided they can't understand it.

Tax returns > home > By year > (this number is federal, this other number is state)

Tax returns > business > By year > (this number is federal, this other number is state)

We use standard filing and organization like the a basic file system all the time, people have decided that it's hard on a computer.

Yep. It's about making things feel simple and easy, without actually being simple and easy.

My parents both started using word processors in the days of MS-DOS and they had no trouble grasping the idea of files and directories, or that a WordPerfect file ends in `.wpd`.

Hiding file extensions is uniquely dangerous on Windows as the file extension is the canonical reference of what type something is. Change the .doc to .exe and the system will try to treat it as an executable. At least on other systems it's a convenience and the system identifies type and executable bit in somewhat more robust ways.

Yes, that's true too. It's a common Windows malware distribution vector - bad actors send files with names like "photo.jpg.exe" or even "photo.exe", with the icon resource in executable's metadata set to look like default image icon, or even a thumbnail of some real photo.

Not only on Windows, on other OSes as well.

Many developers don't rely on the OS API to check the file contents and use a simple extension checking.

Countless words have been written about this, but does MS see it as a problem?

> by catering to the use cases of the common man, you're limiting them to your interpretation of what the common man's use cases are.

Or, using telemetry, user studies and more, you can actually figure out what those use cases are. It's not rocket surgery.

> Or, using telemetry, user studies and more, you can actually figure out what those use cases are. It's not rocket surgery.

Or you end up convincing yourself into thinking your own preconceptions are actually the real use cases. It's like social science, except most software development companies haven't heard of any kind of scientific rigour. Not to mention the study tools are broken on purpose too; it's not unheard of that people writing e.g. analytics / A/B-testing tools optimize them for the "wow it works" aspect - successfully, because most companies using them don't know squat about stats.

That said, even if you identify the right use cases, there's the orthogonal aspect of whether your tool will allow for those and only those use cases, or if it is a more general one.

I agree. The catering to the common man has become more and more prevalent over the years. The first thing I do on a fresh windows install is show full paths and full extensions. I was so pissed when I couldn't change the installation drive of Microsoft Office. Kinda like iOS vs Android. I think iOS purposely doesn't provide features/customizations to make their product easier to use for "the common man". I wish all these products would ask you on installation, how hands off do you want the product.

Except they're not. Full paths, hidden files, and file extensions are also now check boxes on the default File Explorer ribbon, along with a button for copy full path.

Plus, all the individual settings are searchable through the Start menu or the search box in the Settings app.

This is nice, but I still want a "Shibboleet" switch where a single action sets lots of settings to what a developer is likely to want. Then I can focus on a few deltas, rather than a whole raft of individual settings and configuration changes made, usually, over the course of a week or two. https://xkcd.com/806/

Isn't that what developer mode is? A switch to set lots of settings that a developer is likely to want.

I think we may be confusing "power-user who uses Windows" versus "developer employed by Microsoft to debug and develop Windows".

For better or worse, instrumenting Windows and analyzing the telemetry is what enables features like this to be developed scientifically rather than based on superstition, whimsy, or prejudice. It's the same principle found in Google Analytics, Tesla's latest models, and the Juno space probe. Good data makes informed decisions more likely. It has to come from somewheres.

TANSTAAFL.

The problem with telemetry/analytics is not that they exist. The problem is, no one knows what they do, and everyone's afraid they may send something sensitive.

Give me a dialog somewhere, in which I would be able to see what's going to be sent (in somewhat human-readable format - i.e. not binary but a slightly commented source for that binary), a place to ask questions ("hey, there's a weird long hex string among the data - what does it encode?") and I'll be completely satisfied, and even praise them for doing things the smart and conscious-user-friendly way.

Well, as long as telemetry doesn't send something I consider sensitive, like an actual screenshots or keystrokes, of course.

Individual events in analytics data may be human-readable, but you can't call a list of 10,000 events human-readable.

Does 'grep' have an analog in Microsoft-world?

Windows has Select-String in Powershell and findstr in cmd.

Not a problem at all. Show me a sample entry (per event type) rather than a full list.

Say, some app has 10000 buttons and counts how many times each button was clicked. Something like "Clicks data: 3 clicks on button #1 (and 9999 more buttons [expand])" and I'm happy.

If there are 10000 different event types - uh, okay, I'll glance over whenever I see something sensitive (like screenshots or keystrokes) and then maybe I'll review it in my spare time. At least I know I can review the whole thing whenever I feel like so.

Upd: I mean, remember the myths about the telemetry. That send webcam pics, start odd network activity upon seeing files named after Hollywood movies and whatever. They'd be debunked in no time. ANd there are real concerns as well - insider previews had (or still has) keyloggers. I'd better know how sensitive the data this keylogger sends, because it could be the whole raw text data, or it could be... err... say, a list of frequencies a letter was recognized from hand drawing (which is a completely different story).

Sorry, but that's not a good enough reason to put my privacy at risk. I have no obligation to make Microsoft designers' jobs easier and no amount of telemetry will stop garbage[1] like the Windows 10 upgrade popup from being developed.

[1] http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/229040-microsofts-latest-...

I apologize for not being clear. Implying that someone ought to run Windows was not my intent. I was attempting, apparently unsuccessfully, to convey the idea that Windows 10 is unexceptional in so far as its design and use comprise tradeoffs.

Then be open about it and make them opt-in. Windows 7 RC was heavily instrumented and this is a large part of why Win7 was so good. With Win10 their approach was way more slimy.

All of these settings existed in previous versions of windows, all this does is gather them in one place.

The OS didn't need to gather mass amounts of data and ship them off to be stored and analyzed to figure out, 'hey, maybe we could gather them all in one place.' They probably just needed to listen to their own developers.

Given that all this data held by US companies on US soil is accessible to the US Government with no real hurdles and there is no real understanding of what they're collecting, ALL OS data collection should be fought all the time.

But why is "telemetry" also going to domains like ad.doubleclick.net or adnexus.net?

Source? Windows doesn't use telemetry for advertising.

Hell I'm in an industry many consider somewhat shady and practically the only telemetry we use for ads is "user installed the app" and "user paid us." Even that's mostly just to keep the ad partner honest. Everything else really is used to make the product better for you (and us) and it even really helps resolve customer support issues.

So how do they target their advertising based on your Windows 10 advertising ID like they said they would?

Alternatively, ask one of the thousands of developers that you employ, what they think could be improved. This isn't rocket science. It's just a dumb menu which collects settings into one place. You can send off an intern to ask around in the company what settings other developers would like to see included.

So, yes, something like this could have easily been a free lunch.

To those complaining about missing file extensions, etc...can I mention that OSX does the same thing by default, and this drives me crazy as well.

Are we trying to make it so users can barely understand the rudimentary concepts of computing before jumping in to using them?

The iPad is a similar situation. :/

> The iPad is a similar situation. :/

This is probably one of the biggest understatements I've heard this week.

It seems to me like the obvious way to handle file extensions is to hide them by default, have an option to show them, and always show them when the file is being renamed. The hoops you have to jump through to change a file extension in MacOS are excessive.

I think the main reason Windows hides them is to prevent users from changing or deleting them while renaming files.

Inadvertently changing a file extension often "breaks" the file for inexperienced users.

that being said OSX's defaults system is IMO far better than the windows registry. You set your defaults once, using the terminal, and it all migrates over to your other / next generation macs using migration assistant, which can be really fast over thunderbolt. It's a long time since I had to deal with basic settings like this. There's also nothing rotting underneath - I can go and delete / rename userland settings from any app anytime I want and set it back to factory. Basically Unix, but consistent over all native apps.

Scott seems to be very excited about this and very happy that he can formally declare himself to be a developer and have it done with, but I can't disagree more. You shouldn't have to formally declare yourself as a developer, because there are a lot of developers and programmers and power users who are not formally developers. If I click "developer mode" and I formally declare myself as a developer, that's a lie because I am not.

I've won awards at work before for creating scripts to automate a certain part of our team's workflow, saving hours each time we have to perform a certain action. But if I was a formal developer, that would just be my job. I'd get no special recognition for it. But I did get special recognition, because I am not a developer by trade.

I don't want to make a formal declaration that I am a developer because formally, I am not. But I'd like to side load apps, see the full path, use Remote Desktop (is that a developer thing? Always seemed like more of a sysadmin thing, I use it every day) and keep my PC awake all the time.

None of those things are developer-specific features. None of them include "install gcc++" or "download Visual Studio" or "change Notepad to vim". What I'd rather make is a formal declaration that I own this computer, not that I am a software developer.

- edit - apparently everyone replying to me failed to read the article. My response is not to Microsoft's decision to call it "developer mode" but Scott's decision to call it a "formal declaration that I'm a developer".

"Formal declaration?" You're literally ticking a per user settings box tied to your Windows Account. Nobody is asking to declare anything formally or otherwise.

They could call it "Power User Mode" but then every gamer would tick it because they think they're more computer literate than most of them are. Better to keep the name as Developer Mode simply to discourage a certain subset of users from thinking it is for them (this has proved effective on Android, where hiding the developer settings kept the self proclaimed "power users" out).

> None of those things are developer-specific features.

It allows sideloading apps, debugging apps, USB & network remote debugging, and USB & network remote debug discovery.

Please read the article, specifically the part where the author says:

"it's got amazing potential, again as a formal declaration that I am a developer."

It's just a checkbox that's called "developer mode", it's not really the same as formally declaring yourself a developer. The important and interesting thing here is that there is a general power-user mode with shortcuts for people who know about advanced computer usage. That you own the computer is not a good measure of your capabilities with it, that would probably be a pretty confusing checkbox for the vast majority of users. I guess you have a point about the naming, but it needs to be (from msft point of view) some kind of name that doesn't tempt non-technical people to enable it.

Did you read the article? Where Scott, the author, said verbatim:

"it's got amazing potential, again as a formal declaration that I am a developer."

That's what I'm responding to.

Dude, there's nothing formal in ticking a box. Sure, they could have called it the 'gizmo mode' as well.

Previous experience tells me that developers will use this "feature" and write software that requires users to have it enabled.

Previous examples for example being software that requires Microsoft SQL server to be installed on client machines as the software needs certain dll files that comes with Microsoft SQL server.

>Previous examples for example being software that requires Microsoft SQL server to be installed on client machines as the software needs certain dll files that comes with Microsoft SQL server.

This is on Microsoft as much as it's on the said devs - Windows packaging/distribution is such a mess - registry being the primary source of problems. And Microsoft doesn't do a good job of packaging stuff.

At least they are moving in the right direction with .NET core and nuget, ship the whole VM with the app, reference stuff that you need as packages - hopefully you will be able to zip the dist folder and everything will run without the user needing to install anything.

> Previous examples for example being software that requires Microsoft SQL server to be installed on client machines as the software needs certain dll files that comes with Microsoft SQL server.

I don't think this is true, Microsoft ship all the client-side components of SQL Server as a bunch of MSIs you can pick-and-choose between. Since at least SQL Server 2005 [1].

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/download/details.aspx?id=247...

Anyone have an idea why they are catering to developers so much, when their treatment of users in general has become so much worse over the past year?

I mean, I guess, developers are sort of the only demographic which could realistically switch to another operating system, and since they are also users, Microsoft kind of has to make up for the assholish treatment that they've been giving users in general, but it seems still quite extreme, if it's only for that reason.

Could be, though, that I'm just suffering from the usual "All others are more naïve than I am"-syndrome, as I myself am for example still far away from ever wanting anything to do with Microsoft again, and I wasn't really opposed to Microsoft before the Windows 10 shitshow either...

The success of an operating system depends on the availability of other applications. By extra focus on developers they are hoping to grow the ecosystem.

At least that's my understanding of it.

In the words of Steve Ballmer:

"Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers."

So Microsoft begins to realize that developers should be helped instead of letting them suffer? They should have done that a few years ago, before most sane persons turned Windows down and never looked back.

So are there any disadvantages to developer mode? The other "developer mode" that lets you load unsigned kernel modules is very keen to remind you that it's on and I believe it disables a couple of things.

It looks like they just put a bunch of the irritating-to-find settings that you always need to change from vanilla to do any real work in one place, rather than scattered across folder settings, registry hacks, group policy and and all the other control panel sections that they were hidden in.

Windows 7 has already a Developer mode (called "God Mode"):

  1. Create a new folder


  2. Rename the folder to

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

  3. Double-click on it, the God Mode control panel window opens

Probably Microsoft forgot about it.

That isn't a developer mode. Nor is it called "GodMode". It's just a way to view control panel applets as a list rather than a hierarchy. It's the same as the search results list that's filtered when you search for something. It give you nothing that isn't available in the normal control panel, it's just a different view. The important part is the GUID, the part of the name before the period doesn't matter - you can replace "GodMode" with anything you like.

The GodMode allows one to access many useful settings from a curated grouped single list view that isn't available anywhere else. The hidden feature is available since WinNT 6 (Vista).

The Win10 DevMode doesn't give you anything that isn't already available from the control panels too. The whole point is, that it's accessable from one page.

And for Win9x (95,98,ME) there were the far more powerful TweakUI tool from Raymond Chan hosted on microsoft.com. An updated improved TweakUI for WinXP was available as part of the PowerToys collection from microsoft.com as well.

Don't downplay my comment. The GUID triva info doesn't add anything and is well known to many Win devs.

> curated grouped single list view that isn't available anywhere else

Yes it is. Via the search box in Control Panel. Microsoft calls it "All Tasks" and it is literally just that, all Control Panel tasks as a list.

> The hidden feature is available since WinNT 6 (Vista).

Coincidentally when they added the search box to Control Panel...

> The Win10 DevMode doesn't give you anything that isn't already available from the control panels too.

Incorrect. Developer Mode enables sideload apps, debugging apps, remote debugging, and remote debug discovery. There is nowhere else (aside from the registry) to enable these development settings.

> Don't downplay my comment.

The so called "Godmode" trick is useless, it shouldn't be shared. People can already open Control Panel and search, same thing.

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