Improve your development experience on Microsoft Windows.

Few Tips and Tricks to make Windows the platform for serious software engineering.

Published on 9/3/2026 • 5 min read • Last modified 9/3/2026

Microsoft Windows is the most used desktop operating system in the World. However, when it comes to Software Development, the experience is sometimes worse than other Operating Systems such as GNU/Linux or macOS.

Microsoft is constantly working on improving the developer experience on Windows to make Windows the platform for developers.

Here are a few tips and tricks to improve your development experience on this popular operating system.

Enable Long File Paths (Windows 10, version 1607 or later)

Windows restricts the file paths for all applications to 260 characters. However, many development tools and package managers won’t work properly without long paths enabled.

To enable long file paths, go to Settings (Win+I) System > Advanced and toggle Enable long paths on.

Long File Paths in Windows Settings

Or run this command in PowerShell:

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

Create a Dev Drive

Dev Drive is a new form of storage drive to improve performance for key developer workloads, such as storing third-party libraries, keeping caches, and compiling.

Benefits of using Dev Drive:

Uses ReFS File System for file system-level optimizations such as block cloning, Sparse VDL, Integrity Streams, etc.
Windows Defender scans your repositories asynchronously using Performance Mode to reduce performance impact.
Faster access when working with a lot of small files such as node_modules.

Dev Drive Performance improvement chart

To create a Dev Drive, open Windows Settings (Win+I) and navigate to System > Storage > Advanced > Storage Settings > Disks & volumes. Select Create dev drive.

You will be given three options:

Create new VHD - Build volume on a new virtual hard disk
Resize an existing volume - Create new unallocated space to build on
Unallocated space on disk - Use the unallocated space on an existing disk. This option will only display if you have previously set up unallocated space in your storage.

Settings Panel on Dev Drive

Option 2 and 3 are slightly faster. But 1 is the most convenient. I personally use option 1.

I recommend storing package caches and repositories on the dev drive.

To set npm cache to the dev drive, run this command:

mkdir Z:\.cache && npm config set cache "Z:\.cache\npm" # Replace Z: with correct drive letter.

To set the Bun cache to the dev drive, add this to %USERPROFILE%\.bunfig.toml

[install.cache]
dir = "Z:/.cache/bun"

Read https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-drive/#storing-package-cache-on-dev-drive for more information on storing cache.

Enable sudo

To enable Sudo for Windows, open System Advanced in Windows Settings and set Enable sudo to On.

sudo in Settings

Git in File Explorer

To enable Git in File Explorer open Windows Settings (Win+I) and navigate to System > Advanced > File Explorer Choose Folder and choose your repositories.

Git in File Explorer in Settings

Let’s see it in action:

Git in File Explorer

Use winget to install apps

winget is a built-in Package Manager in Microsoft Windows. You can install apps and development tools using this tool.

Example:

winget install Node.js

Install PowerShell 7

Windows ships with a very old version of PowerShell by default. The new PowerShell has many new improvements over it, and it’s compatible with multiple operating systems.

To install PowerShell, you can use winget:

winget install Microsoft.PowerShell

Customize your shell

While this is not unique to Windows, you can customize your shell in various ways, such as using oh-my-posh, starship, and many more.

You can see mine at this URL: https://moheshwar.com/posts/shellsetup/

Install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)

WSL is a great option to use Linux utilities without having a Linux VM or changing operating systems. It gives you a full Linux and POSIX-compliant (depending on the distro) environment inside Windows to work on.

Ubuntu is the default option as a distro when using WSL. However, in my experience, Ubuntu isn’t the best choice when doing development work, as it ships with very old versions of packages.

I prefer Arch Linux as my WSL distro.

I recommend following this guide to install Arch Linux in WSL: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Install_Arch_Linux_on_WSL

I also recommend using PowerShell-WSL-Interop module in PowerShell to use Linux commands directly from PowerShell.

Both Visual Studio Code (VS Code) with the WSL extension and JetBrains IDEs support WSL properly.

Arch Linux with PowerShell in WSL

You can also replace sudo with Windows Hello in WSL with wsl-hello-sudo

Try Intelligent Terminal

Intelligent Terminal is a new Terminal Application for Windows focused on agentic workflow. It can be used with GitHub Copilot CLI or other AI agents to get AI assistance when working with Terminal or a command-line interface.

Key features include an agent in a dedicated pane that sees your shell context, catches errors as they happen, and helps you fix them without copy-pasting. Ask it to explain failures, generate commands, or work through multi-step tasks while your shell stays unblocked.

Intelligent Terminal

You can get Intelligent Terminal from the Microsoft Store.

Use Bitwarden as your SSH agent

This is not unique to Windows. Bitwarden is a popular password manager. It can also store SSH keys. Learn more about setting up Bitwarden as your SSH agent here: https://bitwarden.com/help/ssh-agent/