3 Windows settings that I'd change immediately

Windows is full of settings. It literally has two different settings apps (Settings and Control Panel). Its therefore pretty likely that the out of the box settings are the best ones for you. Here are my 3 picks for what you should change first.

1. Turn off the 'finish setup' screen

If you don't use Onedrive, you've probably seen this before. It's the annoying popup straight after the login screen that prompts you to enabled Onedrive, sign into a Microsoft Account or similar. The good news is that this can actually be disabled.

Open Settings → General → Notifications and scroll down until you see additional notifications. Simply untick all the boxes shown, and you won't see these popups anymore.

2. Make file extensions visible

Windows hides common file extensions by default. That might make folders look a little cleaner, but it causes a lot of confusion when trying to figure out why files won't open. Being able to view file extensions also allows you to instantly change them if they are incorrect. (This does not magically change the file type though!)

In File Explorer, open View → Show → File name extensions. Once enabled, files will display their extensions such as .exe, .pdf, .jpg and .txt.

3. Disable notifications you don't need

Windows and installed applications can generate a surprising number of notifications. Most of them aren't important enough to interrupt what you're doing. Furthermore, the ones you you actually need get lost amongst the noise. Here's how to disable them.

Go to Settings → System → Notifications and work through the applications that are allowed to send notifications. Keep the ones you genuinely want and switch off the rest.