How to customize the Windows 11 Start menu and taskbar – Guide

If you’ve upgraded your computer from Windows 10 to Windows 11, you may find that your taskbar is not as configurable and may not be as useful as it used to be. For example, the old familiar Start menu with configurable Live Tiles is gone. The search box is no longer on the taskbar, but can be accessed by clicking an additional step in the Start menu first. One more thing: the taskbar is now permanently glued to the bottom of the screen, so if you feel more comfortable placing it at the top of the screen or on both sides, you’re out of luck. As you can imagine, Windows users are already posting fixes for at least some of these issues, as long as you feel comfortable tweaking your Windows registry. For example, there is one that allows you to move the taskbar to the top of the screen and another that allows you to change the size of the taskbar.

Edit taskbar alignment and shortcuts

Theme Windows 11 Start Menu and Taskbar

By default, the Start menu and taskbar backgrounds in Windows 11 are either light or dark, depending on your system preferences. If that’s too boring for you, Windows 11 lets you extend your system’s theme and colors to the taskbar. Go to Settings > Personalization > Colors and toggle on Show accent color on Start and taskbar. The Start Menu and Taskbar Scenarios Now feature the dominant color of your PC theme. In addition to installed programs, the Windows 11 Start menu gives you quick access to the apps you open the most and those you’ve recently downloaded. Given the limited space of the Start menu, this can however make it more crowded than necessary and difficult for you to find your pinned apps. To edit what the Start menu shows, go to Settings > Personalization > Start. Turn off the sections you don’t need and leave the rest as is. Also, you can unpin the apps you don’t actively need for a cleaner start. Just right-click on an application icon in Start and click on the Unpin option from the taskbar to do so. Microsoft only allows you to customize the Windows 11 Start Menu and Taskbar to a certain extent. For more customization tools, you’ll have to turn to a third-party app called Start11. With Start11, you can replace the Windows 11 Start menu with various classic looks, including Windows 7. It also allows you to fine-tune the Start menu layout, adjust its transparency and colors, add shortcuts to settings you access the most. , relocate it to the corner or top, and more. Start11 also brings back some taskbar functionality that Windows 11 removed. You can, for example, add the context menu, which previously you could access by right-clicking on the taskbar. Plus, with Start11, you can easily adjust the size of the taskbar without diving into the registry.

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