Best Windows 11 Settings for Developers and Power Users

1. Developer Mode — optional, not mandatory

Developer Mode is the first thing many guides tell you to flip on. In practice, most modern development does not require it. It exists mainly to allow sideloading unsigned apps, easier remote and device-portal debugging, and creating symbolic links without elevation. If none of that applies to you, leave it off — it slightly widens your machine's attack surface for no benefit.

To turn it on when a tool requires it:

1. Open Settings > System > For developers.
2. Switch Developer Mode to On and confirm the prompt.

2. Windows Terminal + PowerShell 7

Windows Terminal is the default terminal app on Windows 11 — a tabbed, GPU-accelerated host that runs Windows PowerShell, Command Prompt and any WSL distribution side by side. What you should change is the shell it defaults to.

Windows ships with Windows PowerShell 5.1 (built on the older .NET Framework). PowerShell 7 is the cross-platform, open-source successor built on modern .NET. It installs as a separate app called pwsh and lives happily alongside 5.1, so nothing breaks. Install it with winget:

winget install --id Microsoft.PowerShell --source winget

Then make it your default in Windows Terminal: open the dropdown next to the new-tab button → Settings → Startup → set Default profile to PowerShell (the 7.x profile, not "Windows PowerShell"). While you are there, set Default terminal application to Windows Terminal so command-line tools and debuggers open in it too.

3. WSL2 — run Linux on Windows

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2) runs a genuine Linux kernel in a lightweight, managed virtual machine, fully integrated with Windows networking and the file system. It is the single biggest quality-of-life upgrade for anyone who deploys to Linux. One command — the method set out in Microsoft's Install WSL guide — installs the platform and a default Ubuntu distribution:

# Run in an elevated PowerShell window
wsl --install

Reboot when prompted, then launch Ubuntu from the Start menu to create your Linux username and password. Useful follow-ups:

wsl --list --online      # see available distributions
wsl --install -d Debian  # install a specific distro
wsl --set-default-version 2   # make WSL2 the default
wsl --update             # update the WSL kernel

WSL2 relies on the Windows virtual machine platform and hardware virtualization. If wsl --install reports a problem, make sure virtualization is enabled in your PC's firmware (UEFI/BIOS). WSL2 works on both Windows 11 Home and Pro.

4. winget — the built-in package manager

winget (the Windows Package Manager) is included with Windows 11 via the App Installer, so there is usually nothing to install. It turns software management into repeatable commands you can script and share:

winget search git            # find a package
winget install Git.Git       # install by ID
winget list                  # what's installed
winget upgrade --all         # update everything at once
winget uninstall <id>        # remove a package

A clean way to reproduce a setup on a new machine is to install your core toolchain in one line:

winget install Microsoft.PowerShell Microsoft.WindowsTerminal Git.Git Microsoft.VisualStudioCode

5. Enable long paths

Windows historically capped file paths at 260 characters (MAX_PATH). Deep dependency trees — node_modules is the classic offender — routinely blow past that and produce cryptic "path too long" build and Git errors. Since Windows 10 version 1607 you can lift the limit, but apps must opt in — as Microsoft's Maximum Path Length Limitation reference explains — so the switch is off by default.

On Windows 11 Pro, Enterprise or Education, use Group Policy:

1. Press Win + R, type gpedit.msc, press Enter.
2. Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Filesystem.
3. Open Enable Win32 long paths, set it to Enabled, and click OK.
4. Restart the PC.

On Windows 11 Home (no Group Policy Editor), set the registry value directly in an elevated PowerShell:

New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem" `
  -Name "LongPathsEnabled" -Value 1 -PropertyType DWord -Force

Reboot afterwards. Tell Git to respect long paths as well:

git config --system core.longpaths true

6. Dev Drive — a faster ReFS volume for your code

A Dev Drive is a storage volume formatted with Microsoft's ReFS file system and tuned for developer workloads. Its headline advantage is a Microsoft Defender performance mode: on a trusted Dev Drive, antivirus scanning runs asynchronously rather than blocking every file operation, which meaningfully cuts build and package-restore times without simply switching protection off. On Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025, ReFS block cloning also makes large file copies nearly free.

Requirements (per the Dev Drive documentation on Microsoft Learn): Windows 11 build 10.0.22621.2338 or later, a minimum of 50 GB free space, local administrator rights, and ideally 16 GB of memory (8 GB minimum, since ReFS uses a little more RAM than NTFS). Dev Drive is available on all Windows 11 editions.

To create one through Settings:

1. Open Settings > System > Storage > Advanced storage settings > Disks & volumes.
2. Select Create dev drive.
3. Choose how to allocate it — a new virtual hard disk (VHD/VHDX), by resizing an existing volume, or from unallocated space — then set the label, drive letter and size (50 GB or more).

Prefer the command line? From an elevated PowerShell you can format an existing empty volume as a Dev Drive:

Format-Volume -DriveLetter D -DevDrive

Check and manage its trusted status with fsutil:

fsutil devdrv query D:     # is it a trusted Dev Drive?
fsutil devdrv trust D:     # (re)designate as trusted

What to put on it: source repositories, package caches and build output. You can point your package managers at the drive, for example an npm cache:

setx /M npm_config_cache D:\packages\npm

Similar environment variables exist for NuGet (NUGET_PACKAGES), pip (PIP_CACHE_DIR), Cargo (CARGO_HOME) and others.

7. Sudo for Windows

Sudo for Windows lets you run a single command with elevation straight from your current terminal, instead of opening a separate administrator window. It is available in Windows 11 version 24H2 and later, per Microsoft's Sudo for Windows documentation. Enable it in Settings:

1. Open Settings > System > For developers on Windows 11 version 24H2; in version 25H2 and later these settings moved to Settings > System > Advanced (the page formerly named "For developers").
2. Turn Enable sudo to On.

It offers three configuration modes, which you can also set from the command line:

• In a new window (forceNewWindow) — the default; runs the command in a new elevated window.
• Input closed (disableInput) — runs elevated in the current window but with the input handle closed.
• Inline (normal) — closest to Linux sudo; runs elevated in the current window and can accept input.

sudo config --enable normal   # switch to inline mode
sudo winget upgrade --all     # run one command elevated

8. Git and SSH basics

Install Git with winget (it also gives you Git Bash and the credential manager):

winget install Git.Git

Set your identity once, globally:

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
git config --global init.defaultBranch main

Windows 11 includes the OpenSSH client, so you can generate a modern Ed25519 key without installing anything extra:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "you@example.com"

Press Enter to accept the default location (%USERPROFILE%\.ssh\id_ed25519) and set a passphrase. Then start the agent, add your key, and copy the public key to your clipboard to paste into GitHub, GitLab or Azure DevOps:

# Enable and start the ssh-agent service (run elevated once)
Get-Service ssh-agent | Set-Service -StartupType Automatic
Start-Service ssh-agent
ssh-add $env:USERPROFILE\.ssh\id_ed25519
Get-Content $env:USERPROFILE\.ssh\id_ed25519.pub | Set-Clipboard

Putting it together

A sensible order on a fresh install: install Windows Terminal and PowerShell 7, run wsl --install, enable long paths, create a Dev Drive and move your repos and caches onto it, turn on Sudo if you want terminal elevation, and finish with Git plus an SSH key. Leave Developer Mode off unless something asks for it. That gives you a fast, scriptable, reproducible Windows 11 workstation without weakening security more than necessary.