desktop customization

Classic 7 is a fan-made Windows modification publicized in May 2026 that rebuilds Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 to look and behave like Windows 7 while retaining the newer system’s support window and compatibility base. It is nostalgia with a servicing strategy attached, and that is what...

Microsoft has not announced Windows 12 as a shipping product in 2026, but a Windows Central experiment using a third-party Rainmeter skin shows how easily Windows 11 can be made to resemble the imagined next version of Microsoft’s desktop OS. The stunt works because it taps into a real...

Ever since Apple’s Liquid Glass design language reignited the transparency wars, the old Windows Aero look has suddenly felt less like nostalgia and more like a design argument Microsoft never fully answered. On Windows 11, you can get blur, translucency, rounded corners, and a more polished...

Someone on Reddit has done what Microsoft itself never attempted: they took the Windows 10 Hero wallpaper and recast it with a Windows 11 logo, producing a fan-made background that feels both nostalgic and strangely plausible. The result taps into one of the most enduring pieces of Windows...

Lively Wallpaper is having a very Windows 11 moment: it sits neatly at the intersection of customization, nostalgia, and practical performance, and that’s exactly why it keeps attracting power users who want more than a static Bloom image. The app’s promise is simple but compelling — animated...

Windows 11 ships with a surprising number of default features that are useful for some people — and actively annoying for others. If you prefer a lean, distraction‑free desktop, five defaults deserve immediate attention: Widgets, Notifications (Do Not Disturb), Copilot, start‑menu ads and...

Windows 11’s Widgets panel has always promised a fast, glanceable dashboard for weather, calendar, stocks and more — but for many users the out‑of‑the‑box experience felt like a half‑finished mobile feed shoved onto the desktop. Tidy it up with five deliberate changes — disabling the news feed...

Windows 11’s newest Start menu redesign has rekindled the age‑old argument: when Microsoft reshapes a core part of the desktop, do power users get a meaningful improvement or a productivity regression? For many desktop users the answer has been the latter — a larger, less predictable Start that...

Windows fans who remember the gentle green hill of Bliss, the folded-fabric sweep of Windows 11’s “Bloom,” and the high-contrast neon cuts of Windows 10’s hero image are getting something delightful: a new wave of community-made wallpaper mashups that blend those instantly recognisable...

Windows 11 doesn’t have to look like every other Windows 11 install on the planet. If you’re tired of Microsoft’s rounded corners, centered taskbar, and predictable Start menu, a new generation of alternative shells can give your desktop a fresh personality — from a near–macOS aesthetic to...

Microsoft’s PowerToys team is quietly prototyping a persistent, Linux‑style menu bar for Windows 11 — a configurable “dock” attached to the new PowerToys Command Palette that can live along any screen edge and host glanceable system info, media controls, and pinned Command Palette extensions...

My Windows lock screen was a blank, forgettable slab of gray for years—now it’s a concise, personal dashboard that greets me with useful info and a little motion, and it took just a few deliberate changes to get there. As the MakeUseOf walkthrough that inspired this overhaul explains, a few...

I swapped Windows 11 for Linux Mint and, after several weeks of daily use and cross‑checking the facts, I found seven concrete areas where Mint delivers a better, simpler, or more private desktop experience than a stock Windows 11 installation — but the trade‑offs matter and the migration is far...

Someone took Windows 8’s Metro/Modern UI and rebuilt it as a Wayland desktop shell for Linux — and it is somehow weirder and more useful than it had any right to be. Background / Overview Microsoft's Windows 8 famously rewired the desktop in 2012, replacing the old Start menu with a full-screen...

I started using Windhawk to treat Windows 11’s taskbar like a design element instead of an afterthought, and the result was immediate: a floating, dock-like bar that actually blends with my wallpaper instead of standing out as a solid slab. What began as a small cosmetic experiment—installing...

Microsoft has quietly restored the long-missed option to use smaller taskbar icons in Windows 11 — but with a distinctly modern twist: the icons can now scale down independently while the taskbar itself keeps its original height, and you can choose whether this happens all the time, only when...

Microsoft has quietly given Windows 11 users a fresh reason to open the Microsoft Store: a new, dedicated Themes department that consolidates hundreds of desktop looks into a single, browsable hub and enables one‑click application of curated theme packages that bundle wallpapers and accent...

Microsoft’s Microsoft Store has quietly become the easiest — and safest — way to make Windows 11 actually look like something you want to use, thanks to a freshly launched Themes department that centralizes hundreds of downloadable themes and simplifies applying them with a single click. The...

Microsoft is moving a long-familiar corner of Windows personalization into the Microsoft Store: the company has begun rolling out a new Themes (personalization) department inside the Microsoft Store on Windows, offering a curated catalogue of themes — more than 400 entries, including roughly 35...

Lively Wallpaper can turn an ordinary Windows 11 desktop into a moving, interactive canvas — and for many users it’s become the first app they install on a fresh system. What began as a community-built, free, open-source utility has matured into a polished Windows-native experience that supports...