Tips and Tricks
This section holds tips and tricks I discovered that may be of use again in the future.
Gnome Desktop Environment under WSL
WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) does not feature a full Gnome Desktop, but some Gnome settings still apply when running graphical applications like Emacs.
Gnome settings can be change by using gsettings or dconf-editor. Examples below will use gsettings.
Adjusting Cursor Size in WSL
To see the current cursor size:
> gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-size
24
To set the current cursor size:
> gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-size <value>
Added: 2025/08/16.
Adjusting GUI Window Button Layout
To see the current button layout:
> gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout
'appmenu:close'
To set the current button layout to show the appmenu on the left and the standard minimise, maximise and close buttons on the right:
> gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout "appmenu:minimize,maximize,close"
Added: 2025/08/16.
Markdown
Supported Languages for Markdown Codeblocks
A list of supported languages for Markdown Codeblocks on Github.
Added: 2025/08/16.
Using yt-dlp
yt-dlp is a command-line tool to download Video/Audio from various sites. The ffmpeg library may be required.
Options I use to:
- download playlist in the best audio in Opus (preferred) or Ogg Vorbis (deprecated) formats, output filename based on playlist index, title and extension and restricted to Windows filenames
yt-dlp -f bestaudio --extract-audio --audio-format <opus/vorbis> -o "%(playlist_index)s-%(track)s.%(ext)s" --windows-filenames <link>
Added: 2025/08/24.