As a user who dual-boots Windows 11 Pro 25H2 with Garuda Mokka GNU Linux, I enjoy trying new things in both OSes, and today, in the Chris from Windows ReadMe newsletter I subscribe to, Chris discussed Windhawk, an open source Windows tweaking tool. The item sparked my interest, so I decided to do a little experimenting with the appearance of the Windows task bar. The end result is that I now have a completely transparent task bar! I tried several themes, including a dock-like one, but in the end I like the Simply Transparent theme the best.
After succeeding with that, while the learning curve was notable, it wasn’t overly steep (Google’s AI overview’s my friend here!), I decided to look around in the panel’s configuration on my Garuda Mokka system, and I wasn’t disappointed! Garuda Mokka includes the panel colorizer widget, pre-installed, right out of the box, so making the panel completely transparent was a very simple process of scrolling through all the available and alphabetically organized presets, down to the Transparent (Built-in) one, and applying it!
I probably spent at least ten times as long customizing the Windows taskbar as my KDE Plasma panel! And the panel looks better!
In spite of the fact that this was a really simple experiment, because I performed similar efforts in both OSes, it was very revealing too! For me, the main takeaway is that Microsoft has a very long way to go if they truly want to pay better attention to the wishes of their users! My number one suggestion is that, when they receive lots of requests for any single feature or the ability to customize something (the task bar comes to mind), they add a setting (even if it has to be placed on an advanced page in Settings) that defaults to their preferred configuration, and offers one or more alternative options the user can choose from. KDE Plasma seems to already do that!
It’s my experience that getting anything non-standard done with Windows is exceedingly difficult. It’s almost as if Microsoft doesn’t want people to tweak the appearance of the OS. Maybe because of stability or security concerns? Bad design? All of the above?
In general I’ve noted that it’s way easier to tweak the various Linux desktops, because they’re built expecting to be tweaked.
That being said, I believe our visitors who are Windows users would appreciate this.
Thank you, @Xander! I appreciate your input! And I agree with you! To tell the truth, I’m not really all that interested in using these twerking utilities in Windows, but the item I read about WindHawk piqued my interest, and the one place I knew I could experiment without altering how my desktop functions was the appearance of the task bar, and I found the result very pleasant, so I kept it in place!
The only Windows I have access to is either Citrix or Azure “AVD”…
Let’s see if it will let me use it…
It seems to let me - without needing administrator…
But I can’t figure out how to switch the taskbar to a dock look… Hmmm - seems I need ot install a separate theme calld “docklike”…
I like docks - I use them in Gnome and MacOs…
Yeah, nah… “docklike” isn’t an installable theme - it involves text editing or something in the taskbar styler… Not that interested if it takes some extra steps… I just wanna clickety-click…
Yeah, yeh…
Figured it out - the Windows 11 Start Menu Styler and The Windows 11 Taskbar Styler are different things - and “docklike” plugin / doohickey is a separate thing from the Start Meny styler… Then I had to install another Mod to increase the icon and taskbar… It’s only then I realise how truly ugly, aesthetically, Windows icons are …
And of course - there’s nothing to move the window controls to the left side - there was an app that still worked in Windows 7 “LeftSider” - but not Windows 8 onwards… If I was actually forced to use Windows on a physical device - I’d probably spend more time tweaking it to look like Gnome or MacOS… But I reckon I’ll stop …
I get that! Plus I’ve discovered that all or many of the add on packages are developed by the community, and while I’m all for communities, I’m not so sure I want to trust every member with my computer, not to mention all the extra stuff loading at system start! So after messing with if for a while, I uninstalled it, and my taskbar is now back to normal, and I can live with that!
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