Summary
Windows 11 has been my least favorite OS from Microsoft, and this is coming from someone whose first OS was Windows Vista. Sure, Windows 11 has gotten much better with recent updates, but overall progress has been sluggish, and improvements arrive late, with the OS nearly at the end of its lifecycle by now. I’m still waiting for Microsoft to announce Windows 12. The company has kept quiet about its plans, but that hasn’t stopped me from wanting the next OS. So I took matters into my own hands and tweaked Windows 11 into my ideal version of Windows 12. Bring back Aero Glass Three tools add translucent title bars to File Explorer and Start Menu Visually, Windows 11 is boring, and the minimalistic look just doesn’t work for me. This is disappointing considering Microsoft was the pioneer of the Aero Glass theme, which they ditched after Windows 7. You can bring the Aero Glass theme back in Windows 11 alongside additional visual changes. The Aero Glass revival doesn’t take much, and you’ll need three different tools: DWMBlurGlass to add the title bar effect from Windows 7, ExplorerBlurMica to make the pane see-through, and TranslucentSM to make the Start Menu transparent as well. This is highly customizable, and you can set the accent and colors for the effect to suit your background wallpaper best. Add the AI features that Microsoft promised Replace Copilot and Recall with PowerToys Microsoft’s aggressive push for AI in Windows 11 has yet to deliver on its promises. The Copilot integration is underwhelming, and its tie-in with Microsoft 365 has locked some useful features, such as group chat rewrites, AI podcast removal, and Deep Research, behind a paywall. Similarly, Windows Recall isn’t any better. Although the AI-powered assistant is useful in helping users retrace their previous steps, it has a major security flaw: it periodically takes screenshots of the session, creating a privacy risk (even though it’s an opt-in feature and locked behind Windows Hello, the risk factor still exists). Not to mention that Windows Recall is restricted to Copilot+ PCs with NPUs, and certain Copilot features also rely on NPUs. Instead, PowerToys offers a more practical approach to AI, with fewer drawbacks. Advanced Paste with AI can rewrite text, translate content, and offer a variety of options for written content, even though it requires an API key from a provider like OpenAI or Azure, or a local model. You can also save prompts you often use, create reusable workflows, and use them for proofreading or to instruct it to write in a specific manner. PowerToys also has Command Palette extensions that extend Windows’ built-in command launcher with extra actions, such as running commands, searching for apps, and building custom workflows, to accelerate tasks. Although it’s a Microsoft-made app, PowerToys isn’t available on Windows 11 out of the box, but I hope Microsoft makes it a default app in the future. Make performance better, not just changed visuals Winhance and a few registry tweaks cut background load In 2024, rumors circulated about Windows 12 as a modular OS where users could install features as they like, and I was into the idea. This removes the need for de-bloating because Windows 11 ships with tons of features that aren’t useful for everyone, but they come at a steep performance cost. This is why de-bloating exists: to remove unnecessary services and apps that hog Windows 11 and make it harder on low-memory computers. To de-bloat, Winhance is a great option and offers a comprehensive setup to remove or keep apps and services. Beyond that, you can make other tweaks, like changing certain registry keys, making Group Policy changes, or reducing Explorer delays and animation effects to make Windows 11 respond faster, not just free up resources. Fix the right-click menu Nilesoft Shell skips “Show more options” and trims the clutter The right-click context menu has been a long-standing issue with Windows 11. It’s cluttered, and it takes more clicks than it should to get to the commands I really want, especially when I have to click “Show More Options” after right-clicking. I’m still used to the old-style Windows 10 right-click menu, and it’s been years since I moved to Windows 11, but old habits die hard, I guess. So instead of changing my habits, I changed the right-click context menu with a free app called Nilesoft Shell that replaces the default right-click context menu, removes clutter, and builds a power-user menu with custom commands for your workflow, even third-party apps, and the possibilities are endless. Knowing Microsoft, I expect them to retain this mess of a right-click menu and carry it to Windows 12, but I’d really love it if they cleaned it up. What you still can’t change about Windows 11 Most of the kinks with Windows 11 can be ironed out, but a lot still can’t be changed. For starters, many first-party apps are web wrappers that hurt performance, and a solution isn’t close, so I recommend using their web versions instead, because why is the Weather app alone consuming over 1GB of RAM? Nevertheless, pessimism about Windows 12 is high among most users, including me, given that Microsoft’s direction has been anti-consumer recently, but I want to be proven wrong.