Abstract
- Microsoft has come a great distance by way of making a cohesive, unified visible design for its Home windows OS.
- Regardless of progress being made, Microsoft’s implementation of Fluent Design rules stays underbaked in some respects.
- I exploit these apps, settings, and tweaks to make my Home windows 11 PCs look extra aesthetically constant and fashionable.
The discharge of
Home windows 11
in 2021 marked a turning level in Microsoft’s consideration to person interface design. With a renewed funding in its Fluent Design UI system, the corporate started the method of modernizing its decades-old flagship PC working system. This strategy of visible rejuvenation is an ongoing improvement, and for my part, there’s nonetheless fairly a bit of labor that must be completed to shine up some tough edges that proceed to persist.
As a giant tech large,
Microsoft’s
efforts are somewhat glacial. Fortunately, a passionate neighborhood of builders, Home windows fans, and lovers of excellent person interface design have come collectively to rectify a number of the extra apparent visible inconsistencies discovered all through the OS. Paired with some minor settings changes, it is potential to have Home windows 11 wanting its very best. Listed below are 5 steps I all the time take to modernize the look of each PC I personally arrange.
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1
Allow mild mode
Gentle themes look slicker and extra fashionable than darkish themes
For essentially the most half, I am a giant fan of darkish mode interfaces. They’re simpler on the eyes, they permit for blur and transparency results to shine, and, merely put, they appear cool. Nevertheless, there is no denying that mild mode is slick in its personal proper: for my cash, Home windows 11’s mild mode manages to offer a way of modernity that its darkish mode counterpart would not fairly match as much as.
By way of consistency, Microsoft nonetheless hasn’t delivered a top-to-bottom implementation of darkish mode throughout all of Home windows. Many legacy Win32 parts of the system stay light-themed, although there are third-party instruments on the market (equivalent to StartAllBack) that may brute-force darkish mode throughout extra floor parts.
To allow mild mode in your Home windows 11 PC, observe these steps:
- Launch the Settings app.
- Navigate to Personalization > Colour > Select your mode.
- Click on or faucet on the drop-down menu, and choose Gentle from the listing of accessible choices.
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2
Obtain MicaForEveryone
Make old-school Win32 title bars pop
A few years again, Microsoft rolled out a Home windows 11 replace that positioned a really delicate Mica blur onto the title bar of basic Win32 program home windows. Sadly, the impact is hardly noticeable, and it actually would not match up with the Mica-rich app surfaces discovered on modernized Home windows system apps.
Mica is an opaque floor materials developed by Microsoft for Home windows 11, which samples the colours out of your desktop wallpaper to create a lovely backdrop impact.
The answer to this specific inconsistency is the wonderful MicaForEveryone device, which is a free obtain over on GitHub. The app is light-weight, serving the only goal of including in a richer Mica impact throughout Win32 title bar surfaces. As an added bonus, the device helps you to swap over to different blur kinds — specifically Microsoft’s personal translucent Acrylic materials.
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3
Obtain TranslucentTB
Make the system taskbar extra Home windows 7-esque
TrnaslucentTB is one other free and light-weight PC app that goes a great distance in bettering the visible design and consistency of Home windows. The app’s choices are accessible by way of a System Tray shortcut icon, with choices to show the taskbar completely clear, translucent, or someplace in between. As with MicaforEveryone, there’s an choice to allow an Acrylic-style taskbar blur, which is my private favourite possibility.
Paradoxically, enabling an Acrylic Home windows taskbar makes the OS look much more just like the a lot older
Home windows 7 with its Aero theming
. The way in which I see it, Home windows 7’s taskbar has survived the check of time, and stays extremely fashionable and constant even in 2025. Acylic is not an ideal match, however it’s shut sufficient so as to add slightly further aptitude to the OS as a complete.
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4
Domesticate Fluent Apps
The Microsoft Retailer is residence to many fabulous Fluent experiences
Pocket-lint / Recordsdata / FluentWeather / Wino Mail
Lots of Microsoft’s personal native Home windows apps blatantly misappropriate the corporate’s Fluent Design interface pointers, and that is in the event that they assist Fluent styling to start with. Fortunately, there is a rising variety of apps accessible on the Microsoft Retailer that I affectionately check with as “Fluent Apps.” These apps are fashionable, native-feeling, and put Microsoft’s efforts to disgrace. I’ve written up a complete listing of a few of
my all-time favourite Fluent Apps
, however some standouts embrace:
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5
Obtain Rectify11
Rectify Microsoft’s inconsistent accent colour theming
Inside the Settings app, Microsoft means that you can decide a system accent colour, which reveals up throughout a few of Home windows 11’s person interface surfaces. Because it presently stands, nevertheless, many components of the OS nonetheless do not respect this accenting system, together with context menus in File Explorer, the cursor highlighting impact for choosing information and folders, and the textual content highlighting device for renaming desktop icons.
Rectify11 is a complete device that makes it straightforward to tweak a number of elements of Home windows 11, with choices to tweak icons, carry again desktop Devices, remaster person avatars, and extra. For the needs of bettering the consistency throughout the system, I exploit Rectify11 to normalize the accent colorization throughout legacy Win32 surfaces of the OS.
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