Annotations should probably be enabled by default too. I've seen some people think the annotate tool is broken in sculpt mode.

I agree. It doesn't really make sense to have them disabled since they are drawn & shown by the user and never actively in the way.

Also a suggestion is to add a shortcut for changing the voxel size. Similar to Dynotopo mode Shift+D. Really speed up workflow. Shift+R would be amazing. But maybe its like a feature request i don't know

Also mirror off by default.

Mirror should not be off by default. Symmetry sculpting is the most common form of sculpting there is and thus should remain on by default for newcomers.

It's not the most common, is the most common if you work with characters. When you are working any thing, a terrain, a object,... and begin to sculpt you don't expect that the mirror is activated. It's an option prone to errors.

It is not activate by default in any other software like Zbrush, Substance Painter, mudbox, mari,... I don't see any reason to activate in blender by default

With that logic we must to activate mirror in edit mode by default.

Other thing, Default Layer Height, to 0.2 or 0.1

In T71366#806380, @Alberto Velázquez (dcvertice) wrote:

Also mirror off by default.

No. This template starts with a sphere, it makes sense to have symmetry enabled by default. If the template started empty or with a plane, then it would make sense to turn it off.

And by the way, that gray matcap is horrible for sculpting.

Oh, yes, my fault. I thought that we have talking about default sculpting parameters.

which are not present in the versioning code:

I'm not sure what is meant by this, but all these changes can be made in the versioning code. This is preferred over updating the .blend, since it's easy to break things when doing that.

It probably also makes sense to change the Sculpting workspace in both the General and Sculpting templates.

Set the viewport shading color to single and 100% white

This is good. But how about the template actually start in single mode by default? It's a pain in the butt to switch from material mode to single mode every time you launch the template.

About 2-columns for the toolbar, easiest is to make that a global change for all 3D viewports. Arguably it should be global because a user could switch to sculpting in any viewport, and the list of tools will probably keep growing.

diff --git a/source/blender/editors/space_view3d/space_view3d.c b/source/blender/editors/space_view3d/space_view3d.c
index 7db1a61..00cf311 100644
--- a/source/blender/editors/space_view3d/space_view3d.c
+++ b/source/blender/editors/space_view3d/space_view3d.c
@@ -1586,8 +1586,8 @@ void ED_spacetype_view3d(void)
   /* regions: tool(bar) */
   art = MEM_callocN(sizeof(ARegionType), "spacetype view3d tools region");
   art->regionid = RGN_TYPE_TOOLS;
-  art->prefsizex = 58; /* XXX */
-  art->prefsizey = 50; /* XXX */
+  art->prefsizex = 58 * 2; /* XXX */
+  art->prefsizey = 50;     /* XXX */
   art->keymapflag = ED_KEYMAP_UI | ED_KEYMAP_FRAMES;
   art->listener = view3d_buttons_region_listener;
   art->message_subscribe = ED_region_generic_tools_region_message_subscribe;

If we want to do this only for specific workspaces, it's this code in version_defaults.c that needs to be modified and given a non-zero value for the sculpting workspace:

diff --git a/source/blender/blenloader/intern/versioning_defaults.c b/source/blender/blenloader/intern/versioning_defaults.c
index bc43d96..0197b4d 100644
--- a/source/blender/blenloader/intern/versioning_defaults.c
+++ b/source/blender/blenloader/intern/versioning_defaults.c
@@ -136,9 +136,16 @@ static void blo_update_defaults_screen(bScreen *screen,
       BKE_area_region_panels_free(&ar->panels);
       BLI_freelistN(&ar->panels_category_active);
 
-      /* Reset size so it uses consistent defaults from the region types. */
-      ar->sizex = 0;
-      ar->sizey = 0;
+      if (ar->regiontype == RGN_TYPE_TOOLS && STREQ(workspace_name, "Sculpting")) {
+        /* Double column for sculpting tools. */
+        ar->sizex = 58 * 2;
+        ar->sizey = 0;
+      }
+      else {
+        /* Reset size so it uses consistent defaults from the region types. */
+        ar->sizex = 0;
+        ar->sizey = 0;
+      }
     }
 
     if (sa->spacetype == SPACE_IMAGE) {

I would much prefer if we *didn't* make the toolbar multi-column by default - certainly for the default workspace.

Multiple columns doesn't sit flush along the edge and will form a cluster of buttons that will eat into the viewport a lot more.

The tool names begin to overlap with the other tools:

Moving the mouse cursor along the single column with names appearing makes it easy to roll over the toolbar and see the names quickly. With multiple columns, you muzt move the mouse cursor in a zig-zag motion, like so:

And lastly, you cannot expand them that way with names: