This playbook installs and configures most of the software I use on my Windows 11 machine for software development.

• Playbook capabilities
• Installation
• Windows host prerequisites installation
• Ansible control node prerequisites installation
• Running a specific set of tagged tasks
• Overriding Defaults
• Included Applications / Configuration (Default)

NOTE: The Playbook is fully configurable. You can skip or reconfigure any task by Overriding Defaults.

• Software
  • Ensures Bloatware removed (see default config for a complete list of Bloatware).
  • Ensure software and packages selected by the user are installed via Chocolatey.
• Windows apps & features
  • Ensures the Optional Windows Features selected by the user are installed and enabled.
  • Ensures WSL2 distro selected by the user is installed and enabled.
• Windows Settings
  • Explorer
    • Ensures Explorer includes the file extension in file names.
    • Ensures Explorer opens itself to the Computer view.
    • Ensures Ribbon menu is disabled in Windows Explorer.
    • Ensures Right-click Context Menu enabled (Windows 11).
  • Start Menu
    • Ensures Automatic Install of Suggested Apps disabled.
    • Ensures App Suggestions in Start menu disabled.
    • Ensures popup "tips" about Windows disabled.
    • Ensures 'Windows Welcome Experience' disabled.
  • Taskbar
    • Ensures 'Search' unpinned from Taskbar.
    • Ensures Task View, Chat and Cortana are unpinned from Taskbar.
    • Ensures 'News and Interests' unpinned from Taskbar.
    • Ensures 'People' unpinned from Taskbar.
    • Ensures 'Edge', 'Store' other built-in shortcuts unpinned from Taskbar.
  • Desktop
    • Ensure Desktop icons are removed.
  • General
    • Ensure configured hostname selected by the user is set.
    • Ensure remote desktop services configured.
    • Ensure sound scheme set to 'No sounds'.
    • Ensure the power plan selected by the user is set.
    • Ensure Windows updates are selected by the user installed.
    • Ensures mouse acceleration is disabled.

Copy and paste the code below into your PowerShell terminal to get your Windows machine ready to work with Ansible.

[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12
$url = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AlexNabokikh/windows-playbook/master/setup.ps1"
$file = "$env:temp\setup.ps1"

(New-Object -TypeName System.Net.WebClient).DownloadFile($url, $file)
powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -File $file -Verbose

1. Install Ansible:

   1. Upgrade Pip: pip3 install --upgrade pip
   2. Install Ansible: pip3 install ansible

2. Clone or download this repository to your local drive.

3. Run ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml inside this directory to install required Ansible collections.

4. Add the IP address and credentials of your Windows machine into the inventory file

5. Run ansible-playbook main.yml inside this directory.

You can filter which part of the provisioning process to run by specifying a set of tags using ansible-playbook --tags flag. The tags available are choco , debloat , desktop , explorer , fonts , hostname , mouse , power , sounds , start_menu , taskbar , updates , windows_features , wsl .

ansible-playbook main.yml --tags "choco,wsl"

You can override any of the defaults configured in default.config.yml by creating a config.yml file and setting the overrides in that file. For example, you can customize the installed packages and enable/disable specific tasks with something like:

configure_hostname: true
custom_hostname: myhostname

install_windows_updates: true
update_categories:
  - Critical Updates
  - Security Updates

choco_installed_packages:
  - googlechrome
  - git
  - golang

install_fonts: true
installed_nerdfonts:
  - Meslo

install_windows_features: true
windows_features:
  Microsoft-Hyper-V: true

install_wsl2: true
wsl2_distribution: wsl-archlinux

remove_bloatware: true
bloatware:
  - Microsoft.Messaging

Packages (installed with Chocolatey):

• 7zip
• adobereader
• auto-dark-mode
• awscli
• capture2text
• choco-cleaner
• choco-upgrade-all-at-startup
• Firefox
• git
• golang
• jre8
• kubernetes-cli
• microsoft-windows-terminal
• powertoys
• python3
• telegram
• terraform
• vlc
• vscode
• zoom

This project was created by Alexander Nabokikh (originally inspired by geerlingguy/mac-dev-playbook).

This software is available under the following licenses:

• MIT