Windows Developer Configurations fixes what Microsoft won't admit it broke

Published Aug 28, 2026, 8:00 AM EDT Korbin is a Linux system administrator who spends most of his time in a terminal figuring out how things actually work. Over the last decade he's written hundreds of articles about Linux configuration, troubleshooting weird problems, and using open-source tools in the real world. He also works a lot with Windows systems and networking, especially in mixed environments where things don't always behave the way the documentation says they should. Writing things down is how he makes sense of it all and hopefully saves someone else a few hours. On a freshly installed copy of Windows 11, I need about 30 minutes to get it into a state that I find suitable for real work. I start by removing all the widgets from the taskbar and Start menu, removing the Recommended section, and enabling options like unhiding file type extensions. I've written before about scripting out parts of that initial setup by using WinGet and a dotfiles repo. It works well for installing all the software I use, but its weak point is getting all the granular settings configured the way I like. At Build 2026, Microsoft published Windows Developer Configurations, which preps a system with all the common software and settings a developer is most likely to need. It's one of the most useful features from that keynote, and it shows Microsoft is taking steps to give power users an easier way to get their systems ready for real work. Two WinGet commands get the system set up The whole config is a plaintext file you can read Microsoft hosts the setup in a public GitHub repo under the MIT license. To get started, you first need to clone the repo. If you don't want to install Git (the script will install it anyway), you can download a ZIP of the repo, extract it, and cd into it. Here's the git command to clone it: git clone https://github.com/microsoft/WindowsDeveloperConfig.git cd WindowsDeveloperConfig Once it's downloaded, cd into the directory (as shown above), then it can be deployed on any Windows 11 system by running two commands in Terminal: winget configure --enable winget configure -f .\windows-dev-config\dev-config.winget --accept-configuration-agreements --disable-interactivity That's all a user needs to do on their end; the DSC (Desired State Configuration) file handles the rest. DSC works by letting you declare the state you want, and the engine figures out how to get the system there. It's different from how a shell script works, and more reliable because commands can be deprecated and break the script. I always have to keep an eye on my shell scripts to make sure the commands inside are still doing what they're supposed to. The setup starts by installing common staples found on most developers' systems: VS Code, Git, GitHub CLI, PowerShell 7, Python, Node LTS, the .NET 10 SDK, and PowerToys, among others. It also installs the Cascadia Code Nerd Fonts, sets PowerShell as the default Windows Terminal profile, and adds Oh My Posh to that profile. Then it enables WSL, forces a reboot (required for WSL), and resumes the setup after you sign back into Windows to finish the Ubuntu installation. Since it's all plain text, I comment out the parts I don't want. You can choose from three options, depending on what kind of setup you're going for. I like the full workstation config that touches everything, but if you only want to configure WSL, there's one for that, and another that just installs the tools for the most common programming languages. The settings list says something interesting Microsoft is turning off its own defaults My favorite part of the Dev Configs is all the settings that get turned off. That stuff is annoying to script out myself, and eventually the registry keys change, and I have to update my script manually. Microsoft's config turns on file extensions, shows hidden files, sets Explorer to open to This PC, switches off recent files and cloud recommendations, and removes the widgets button from the taskbar. Start menu recommendations go away, Bing suggestions disappear from the Start menu, and Edge opens to a blank tab page and no longer hassles you with a first-run wizard. There's a slew of more advanced settings, too. To me, these are all sensible config settings that Windows should be shipping with in the first place. It seems Microsoft already knows which settings get in the way for serious users, and giving everyone a quick config to get their workstation properly set up is an admission of that. At least they've given us an official way to configure our systems, because it's definitely more reliable than the hodgepodge of registry values I've copied from forum threads. Microsoft has floated this idea before Dev Home was only recently discontinued I remain a little skeptical about Dev Configs because they're Microsoft's second attempt at this. Dev Home launched in 2023 and did mostly the same thing, and Microsoft shut it down less than two years later. I also don't agree with some of the settings that the config modifies, like turning Remote Desktop on and silencing toast notifications. Forcing a reboot seems outdated, too. This is more likely to stick around because it's just a text file. There's nothing to really deprecate, and it already runs with a built-in tool, WinGet. If Microsoft eventually loses interest, I can always fork the config and keep using it. As for the few options I disagree with, the file is human-readable, and I just delete the lines I don't want. A nice fix for a problem Microsoft created The simplicity of having essential app installs and settings bundled in a single text file is great. I've incorporated this into my own post-install routine, though I still wish that this wasn't necessary at all. It's a step in the right direction, but Microsoft evidently knows what settings we hate, so they really shouldn't be requiring us to run an extra setup just to disable them.