finally made my dream to manipulate the taskbar to have some eye candy animated effects and even act like a dock - yet still be the taskbar. other than zoom I also included animations like pulse, frame, transporter and many more. Used a lot of AI chat credits, a lot of trial-and-error to see how stuff runs from the taskbar and what is needed to manage the layering of the display. made some concept art in PS to train the AI what I want to see. what do you think ?

I spent a while trying to get a truly black Windows 11 (25H2): Explorer, menus, Control Panel, everything. Windows' dark mode only gives you dark gray (around #202020), and the Control Panel stays white. What finally worked for me was combining two things: a registry preset and a Windhawk mod. Here's how, in case it helps someone else.

works with adobe softwares

## The two pieces

AveYo's "Pitch Black Theme" .reg preset

[https://gist.github.com/AveYo/80fc6677b9f34939e44364880fbf3768](https://gist.github.com/AveYo/80fc6677b9f34939e44364880fbf3768))

Credit to AveYo for this one. It sets the accent palette, title bars and borders, taskbar, Start menu and logon screen to pure black, and turns on dark mode with transparency off. On its own it did not make the Explorer content area or the Control Panel black.

1. Windhawk mod: "Translucent Windows"

## How I did it

Setup:Windows 11 25H2, Windhawk \[v1.6.1\].

Create a restore point, and export your current \HKCU\Control Panel\Colors\ and \`HKCU\\...\\Themes\\Personalize\ keys as a backup.

Download the .reg from the gist above, **read it before importing**, and import it. Log out and back in.

Install Windhawk from [windhawk.net](http://windhawk.net), search the catalog for **Translucent Windows** and install it.

In the mod's **Settings** I used:

• - Windows theme custom rendering: on
• - New system colors:on
• - Windows theme accent colorizer: on
• - Translucent Effects : background effects blur (accent blur behind) + AccentBlurBehind color blend 00000000
• - Flyout effects: on
• - restarting Explorer if you want

## Things to know before you try it

- The .reg writes to \`HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\`, so it needs admin rights. The version I used also **disables the lock screen** (NoLockScreen) and the logon background image. If you want to keep them, remove those lines before importing.

- Tested on Windows 11 25H2 only.

- Windhawk mods hook system processes, so keep the restore point.

- To undo: disable or uninstall the mod in Windhawk and re-import your registry backup.

please upvote if you like, show yours feedback and results.

Happy to answer questions. If you find better settings, please share!

I'm building Pigment, a free Windows 11 customization app that uses your wallpaper's colors for the terminal, player and desktop widgets.

This is the music preset. One command arranges regular Windows Terminal windows around the lyrics player: rotating ASCII logo, Matrix, two audio visualizers and a clock. There's also a dock, window overview, globe search and much more.

Does the layout feel too busy? It's still a beta, and feedback from people trying it on their own PCs would help a lot.

Download and more screenshots: https://github.com/Ddrakkx/pigment

Wallpaper: Warrior's Tomb | Forest Sounds in Wallpaper Engine (not included). Windows 11 x64. The installer is unsigned.

I've always been fascinated by how customizable Linux is — especially when watching people share their Arch + Hyprland setups. The ricing community makes it look like an art form.

One thing that always stood out to me: how effortlessly they switch wallpapers. It's part of the workflow — not buried in settings, not right-click → Personalize → Browse → Apply. Just part of the desktop experience.

I wanted that on Windows.

But "ricing" is a Linux concept. There aren't many tools on Windows that give you that same smooth, modern feel for wallpaper switching.

So I built WallpaperBar.

What it does:

- A sleek dock-style bar that appears at the bottom of your screen.

- Press Ctrl + Alt + Q → it slides up. Press again → it disappears.

- Click "+" to add wallpapers (PNG, JPG, JPEG, WebP).

- Click a thumbnail → applies instantly.

- Or hover for 3 seconds → auto-applies.

- Drag & drop to reorder.

Built with Python + PySide6.

It's not Hyprland, and it's not Arch, but it's a small step toward making Windows feel a bit more like home for people who appreciate that kind of customization.

If you're someone who also admires the Linux ricing community and wishes Windows had a bit of that flavor — I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Most people who spend a lot of time working on a computer probably have the bookmarks bar enabled in their browser. I’ve always wondered why Windows doesn’t offer something similar in File Explorer.

It seems like it would be a genuinely useful feature for quickly accessing frequently used folders and locations.

The GIF shows roughly how I imagine it could work.

Usability concept:

• Single click to add
• Middle click to delete
• Ctrl click to open in new window
• Use in addition to quick access: 2 places for 2 distinct categories of items: quick access for more persistent folders, because adding and deleting items requires more friction, bookmarks for today's project that will be quickly removed tommorow.
• Compact FX menu to hold less used bookmarks in cathegorized way.
• Overflow to next row if does not fit.
• My quick access is so filled that if i use 1/4 of monitor, I have to scroll down to access disk drives - it solves that + what if you want to see directory tree in left pane - you can have more space for when bookmarks bar takes part of job.
• Bigger items than in quick access: easier to hit when I'm drunk.

Hello everyone, I recently got a ThinkPad T470s and installed Windows 8.1 and wanted to customize my Start Menu a bit more. I couldn't find any rectangular Firefox tiles, so I made my own in GIMP without Ai.

I made two versions:

· A flat one that matches the original Windows 8 aesthetic

· A more modern one

This is my first time making something like this. I used oblytyle to apply them. If anyone wants them, I can upload the PNGs. Feel free to send requests for other programs, I'll try my best.

Let me know what yall think

https://imgur.com/a/0P7Fepf

This is what the Aero theme from Windows Longhorn would look like if it was modernized. I also included the images that I had to create to make this image to show how I created this concept. The first image is the concept image. I had already extracted the STREAM resources from a recreated aero.msstyles a while ago. I decided to use the images that are used for the window borders as a "base" to create the modernized window borders on a separate layer, then I removed the layer that contained the original window borders, leaving just the modernized window borders. I used the images that are used for the caption buttons as a "base" to create the modernized caption buttons on a separate layer, then I removed the layer that contained the original caption buttons, leaving just the modernized caption buttons. These images are the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth images. The rest of the images are other images I had to create to make the concept image. This includes modernized versions of the back button and star button, the background of the taskbar, the background of the start button, the background of the taskbar button, an enlarged version of the Windows logo that is displayed on the start button, a smaller version of the larger logo, and a modernized version of the OK button in winver.

I took this photo using Expert RAW on my Samsung Galaxy S25 and edited it in Adobe Lightroom.

Long story short the reason the show desktop button doesnt have any aero effects is that I was trying to recreate the windows 8.1 taskbar and start button with the help of AI and basically due to some AI hallucination a masking error in the code (the masking was supposed to replicate how the colour of the start button logo changes when hovered to the accent colour) caused the start button to not appear

I used windhawk and the tweak Windows 11 Taskbar Styler

I made a small set of colorful .ico folder icons for Windows File Explorer.

I wanted some simple alternatives to the default yellow folder icon, especially ones that look clean in the Details view.

The icons are free to download and use for non-commercial purposes.

GitHub:

https://github.com/anyistaken/Windows-Colorful-Folder-Icons

these are alternate versions of windows i made for an alternate history project called Einheit and Ordung, this is where Microsoft went a little differently... where they cared a little more about their consumers, improved Me and 2000 and actually saw consumers as humans instead of just mere products, due to different political situations.

i used paint.net, already existing versions of windows and other tools and assets

no generative ai was used in the making of these concepts

An alternate timeline where Windows 9 existed:

Codename: Blue Threshold.

Deep system name: Windows IX (to avoid compatibility issues with Windows 95 and 98)

Release date: June 18th, 2014.

Default wallpaper name: Navy Wallpaper.

Aesthetic: Mix of Frutiger Aero and Metro

End of Life support: June 18th, 2024.

NOTE: This is just my creativity and imagination and I'm not trying to promote misinformation as Windows 9 never existed as an actual Windows OS version.