windows customization

YASB is the kind of small, focused tool that changes how you look at your desktop: a top-mounted, highly configurable status bar that surfaces the data you actually want — system health, media controls, clocks, a Pomodoro timer, an audio visualizer and shortcuts — all without hunting through the...

Customization is no longer a niche pastime for a handful of power users — it’s a practical way to shape Windows into a faster, clearer, and more productive workspace. The Habr piece you provided sketches a pragmatic toolbox of utilities — Microsoft PowerToys, WinAero Tweaker, ExplorerPatcher...

Customization is the secret handshake of power users: with a handful of trusted utilities you can reshape Windows into a faster, cleaner, and more productive workspace — but only if you respect the risks. This feature examines six widely used tools — Microsoft PowerToys, WinAero Tweaker...

If you like a clean desktop and want your wallpaper to shine without the taskbar getting in the way, TranslucentTB is a small, free utility that does exactly what PCWorld described: it makes the Windows taskbar transparent, or blurry, acrylic, or opaque — and it does so with just a click from...

Windows already ships a decent set of utilities, but a handful of small, focused open‑source apps deliver everyday quality‑of‑life features so clean and well‑engineered that they deserve serious consideration from Microsoft — either as built‑in capabilities, tightly integrated optional...

A compact, open‑source PowerShell project now circulating on GitHub promises to strip most of Windows 11’s newly embedded AI features — including Copilot and Recall — out of a PC with a single command and an optional GUI, and the reaction is a textbook mix of relief, alarm and operational...

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...

Open Shell’s Classic Start Menu returns a familiar, no-frills interface to modern Windows — but using it well requires knowing its limits, integration quirks on Windows 11, and how to avoid common pitfalls that follow major OS updates. Background Open Shell is the community-led continuation of...

Windows can look cleaner than macOS — sometimes far cleaner — with a handful of deliberate visual decisions and a small set of community tools that tidy the interface without breaking productivity or habit. The MakeUseOf walk-through that inspired this approach reduced visual clutter and added...

Windows 11 doesn’t have to be the desktop you were given — it can be the desktop you build. If you want subtle but meaningful improvements that smooth daily friction without completely reworking your workflow, three apps deserve your attention this weekend: Windhawk for targeted UI mods...

Windhawk’s modular mods ecosystem is doing more than dressing up Windows—it’s quietly restoring missing functionality, smoothing rough edges, and giving power users surgical control over the Start menu, Taskbar, File Explorer and more, and the nine community‑favorite mods below represent the...

I spent a day and a half turning a stock Windows 11 desktop into a minimalist, functional work of art — and the experience shows why ricing Windows is no longer the niche hobby it once was, but a practical way to reclaim time, attention, and joy from an OS that increasingly prioritizes...

FlyOOBE’s newest releases make it remarkably easy to flip hidden Windows feature flags — the same switches ViVeTool has exposed for years — by wrapping ViVeTool in a graphical interface so you can paste feature IDs and enable or disable them without touching the command line. Background /...

Windows 11 has matured, but the practical polish that kept power users happy in Windows 10 remains scattered across third‑party projects — and a handful of those projects do more than restore nostalgia: they solve real, repeatable productivity problems that Microsoft could and should offer as...

I taught a large language model to write AutoHotkey v2 scripts for me, and within minutes I had small, reliable automations running on my Windows 11 desktop — from remapping keys to a tiny app launcher — all created through a conversational, iterative process that many now call “vibe‑coding.”...

If your keyboard’s factory glow feels bland or gets in the way of late‑night work, changing its RGB backlight is one of the fastest ways to personalize a Windows PC and improve visibility—whether you want a single static color, a slow breathing effect for low‑light typing, or per‑key palettes...

Microsoft’s quick follow-up release to PowerToys 0.95.0—version 0.95.1—finally puts an end to the chaotic, involuntary Light/Dark theme flips that surprised many users after the initial rollout, but the episode leaves useful lessons about defaults, update paths, and user trust for both Microsoft...

Microsoft’s latest Insider preview builds extend the system-wide Dark theme into long-neglected corners of File Explorer and several legacy dialogs, eliminating many of the jarring white “flash” moments that have plagued Dark mode users and delivering a tangible quality‑of‑life polish ahead of...

Start11’s latest update continues the app’s steady, practical mission: restore control of the Start menu and taskbar for users who find Windows 11’s defaults limiting. The v2.55 update, released as a beta build at the end of September, brings a mix of small but meaningful behavior changes, a...

Windows 11’s clean, opinionated design won plenty of fans — but that same polish left many power users and nostalgia seekers wanting more control over the taskbar, Start menu, and desktop personality. A wave of community-built mods has stepped in to fill that gap, offering everything from a...