This is a thread where we collect short tips and tricks that can improve the Qubes experience for most users. We want to create a one-stop-post where people can quickly find and implement changes to their systems instead of having to search for and visit a hundred different posts.

Feel free to add your tip to this wiki post (anyone can edit this)

Guidelines These are subject to frequent and major changes while we figure out how this might work 1. Brevity is key--post as few words as possible 2. If your tip cannot be condensed into a few lines, it doesn't belong here 3. If your tip is niche with regard to Qubes users, it doesn't belong here* 4. Follow the established style convention 5. Feel free to add new categories when necessary 6. Give credit (even to yourself) and link to the original If your tip doesn't have its own post/page, post it here in a reply so you have a link. This is for consistency and also so we can neatly split the thread if needed 7. Discussions regarding specific tips belong in their own threads if available

* ^{^{What's 'niche' is going to spawn a lot of debate and angst, but this constraint is necessary to prevent this post from getting bloated and mostly irrelevant}}

Quick Quality-of-Life Improvements

Input Devices

Prevent loss-of-control from sys-usb shutdown - [dom0] crontab -e, then enter * * * * * qvm-start --skip-if-running sys-usb > /dev/null 2>&1 and save. Assumes your sys-usb is named sys-usb @SteveC
Manually hide the mouse cursor in full-screen - [dom0] To create a cursor toggle, install unclutter, then enter the following code (expandable below) and create keyboard shortcut pointing to toggle-unclutter.sh. Credits: vecna13 from the 2676 issue

[details="hide cursor (dom0)"]

  mkdir $HOME/bin
  cat &lt;&lt; 'EOF' | tee $HOME/bin/toggle-unclutter.sh

  #! /bin/sh
  if pgrep unclutter &amp;&gt; /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1
  then
     killall unclutter
  else
     unclutter -idle 1 &amp;
  fi
  EOF

  chmod +x $HOME/bin/toggle-unclutter.sh

[/details]

Storage

Send files directly to external storage mounted in other qube - [AppVM] Assumes external storage is mounted under /mnt/ext_store/. Execute the following commands in that destination qube: ><pre>mv ~/QubesIncoming ~/QubesIncoming_backup >ln -s /mnt/ext_store/ ~/QubesIncoming

This will copy files into a directory named after the origin qube, in the external storage: /mnt/ext_store/origin-qube. If you don't want that directory, then the mount command should be: >

ln -s /mnt/ext_store/ ~/QubesIncoming/origin-qube

Where origin-qube is the name of the origin qube. Of course the directory QubesIncoming/origin-qube has to exist for this to work (the qvm-copy utility won't necessarily have created it yet). You can create it with mkdir -p ~/QubesIncoming/origin-qube. Then use qvm-copy in your data origin qube, targeting that destination qube @SteveC

WiFi

Keep WiFi off by default on boot - [TemplateVM] >
```
[main]
  >WirelessEnabled=false
```
In sys-net's template, create the file /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state containing the code above @Bearillo
Soft toggle WiFi - [dom0] qvm-run sys-net -- "if nmcli radio wifi | head -c1 | egrep 'e'; then nmcli radio wifi off; else nmcli radio wifi on; fi" (can be mapped to shortcut) @Bearillo

Video playback - Reduce VLC's CPU usage - [AppVM] Under 'Video' in Preferences (Ctrl+P), change 'Output' to 'X11 video output (XCB)' @solene - Reduce mpv's CPU usage (link includes guide for YouTube too) - [TemplateVM] /etc/mpv/mpv.conf file, insert vo=x11 and profile=sw-fast as separate lines @Bearillo

Notifications - Disable notifications per VM - Fedora-XFCE only - [AppVM] Run xfce4-notifyd-config, then xfconf-query -c xfce4-notifyd -p /do-not-disturb --set true @solene