Windows 10 Tips, Tricks, and Improvements Options

[SubRosa]

I created this to be a place where people can post their Windows 10 life hacks. Not a place to troubleshoot problems, but rather a place to put ways to customize and tame the beast.

I will start with a little program I just found that can restore the old style start menu from Windows 7 or XP. Open Shell Menu is a free program that allows you to customize the Windows 10 Start Menu. As I said, it allows you to recreate the format of the older Windows editions.

You can also create folders on the start menu, and move shortcuts back and forth on the menu however you want. Things you cannot do in Windows 10. (You can do that with the tiles, but not with the list of programs on the start menu just left of the tiles). It also brings back the Recent Items list.

It also still leaves you a single icon on the new menu that you can click to bring up the original Windows 10 style start menu.

Here is an example of what I did with it on my non-gaming PC There are a lot of ways you can customize it however. So this is not the only way it could look.

[SubRosa]

Well I finally decided to update my Windows 7 box to Windows 10. It was still free from here so long as you already have an older version of Windows


Now I am customizing, and the black start button and other system icons were driving me crazy, as it was hard for me to see with my green taskbar. So I found out how to change them to white.



Go to Personalization -> Colors

Under Choose Your Color, set to Custom, then:
Choose your default Windows mode = Dark
Choose your default app mode = Light

Transparency Effects = On

Pick your accent color below

Show accent color on the following surfaces
Start, taskbar, and action center = On
Title bars and windows borders = On



Note, the Start, taskbar, and action center box will be grayed out unless you set Color to Dark or Custom.

If you like the Dark option, you don't need to set your Color ot Custom, just go Dark.