 The lengths people will go to keep using Windows is astonishing. But the fact of the matter is, every new version, including Windows 11, has some amazing new features that you don't want to miss out on at the cost of a bunch of new annoyances you'll have to get used to. Or you can get mad and take it in your own hands, and you don't even have to be an elite power user to do it. So let me show you how the average user can de-crapify Windows 11 and make it the way it should have been to begin with. War Thunder is an online military vehicle combat game that's free to play and a lot of fun. Try it for free down below today and get some special bonus items for signing up. The taskbar and start menu are arguably the biggest sources of annoyance in Windows 11. And there's no shortage of fixes for that. By far the most comprehensive available so far is Start All Back, which is currently in its release candidate phase. It's so comprehensive that it addresses almost every major issue many will have with Windows 11's new UI, full stop. Not only can it make the start menu less...whatever this is, by restoring it to a more Windows 7-like state, but it comes with its own search engine that doesn't rely on the bingified search that Microsoft's been using since Windows 10. The taskbar itself can be modified dramatically with this rather fetching, segmented look that makes the centered taskbar make a lot more sense while freeing up desktop real estate otherwise used by a solid bar. I actually kinda like this look, although you can just go for the classic style if that's more your jam. That's not where the Windows 7 and 10 styling stops though, because you can also use it for the corner icons too. By default, Windows 11 bundles the volume control with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in the new control center, which can make things a little trickier to do quickly. But with Start All Back, you can separate these icons into their own functions, just like old times. In fact, you can even restore Explorer to the Windows 7 or 10 layout complete with Ribbon UI, and it can make the old right-click menus the default instead of the new simplified ones that hide your third-party extensions. Oh, and even weirdos who like to move the taskbar around can put it anywhere they want, albeit with the caveat that flyouts will still come from the bottom right corner of the screen unless you're using the Windows 7 or 10 styles. There's more that Start All Back can do too, but they're not the only game in town. Meet Start 11 by Stardoc. This does a lot of the same stuff as Start All Back, but some of the extended functionality is different, particularly when it comes to integration with the broader Object Desktop Suite. Stardoc's Start Menu Replacement has a more accurate Windows 10 style, as well as an original modern design that's different from anything Microsoft has done to date. Customization is also a bigger focus overall for Start 11 with custom textures, actions, and direct controls for transparency, blur, and color to dial it in just right. Unfortunately, both Start All Back and Start 11 are paid software, but the good news is that each only costs five bucks once. As of right now, there aren't any officially supported free options for Windows 11. You can use OpenShell, which is a free Start Menu Replacement for Windows 10, but it runs behind the regular Start Menu and only opens if you hit the Windows key, which is less than ideal. So what can you get away with for free? First, you can left align your taskbar. This is something that Microsoft has mercifully added an option for, which you can find in the taskbar settings under the taskbar behaviors. Simple and free. If you want classic right-click menus or to move your taskbar to the top of the screen, both of these can be done with a couple of simple registry tweaks without even having to install anything. I'll link those down below. Now, if you really like the concept of that centered taskbar doc from Start All Back, then good news. Rounded TB is free and will do the same thing. You'll need to use taskbar settings to choose the alignment, but once you dial it in, it looks pretty snazzy if you ask me. Unlike Start All Back though, the menu itself is still in the middle with this method. It's got baked-in support for another app called Translucent TB that allows you to customize the visual style of the bar, but there are performance ramifications for doing this, so it's not recommended by the developers right now. Taskbar X can do some of the same stuff and does a bit more with behavior rather than appearance if you want a more tweaky tool for the taskbar. But as cool as all this is, there's still something missing from Windows 11. Live tiles. If you grew to love them since their introduction in Windows 8, then good news. Microsoft removed them in Windows 11. Wait, that's not good news at all. No, no, the good news is an intrepid developer decided to create a free program to put live tiles wherever the heck you want on both Windows 10 and 11. Put them in the start menu, put them on the desktop as widgets. It doesn't matter. Your app doesn't even have to have a live tile. It can grab notifications and use those to make it live. It's pretty sweet. Or at least it's a start. What if you also happen to hate the new route of Windows? Well, that's a little trickier. Win 11 Disable or Restore Rounded Corners is a creatively named app that does exactly what it says on the tin by modifying the desktop window manager DLL to remove the rounded corner bits entirely. That's a potential security risk since it requires the permissions of the file to be modified, plus you'll need to reapply the patch if the file ever gets an update from Microsoft. But if you do break something, there's always System Restore. And the upside is you need only run the app and reboot to once again gaze upon the glory of 90 degree corners, just like God intended. Speaking of intentions, I'm not sure you can give Microsoft much benefit of the doubt on making it way more difficult to change your default browser than it was on Windows 10. Thankfully, Mozilla reverse engineered Edge's one-click switch method for Firefox. For those of you with a more Google-centric browser, you'll still have to painstakingly make the changes yourself. But you'll notice that even if you get a different web browser set as the default, no matter what method you use, Microsoft Edge will still launch from time to time when clicking on links or accessing Windows Help. Enter Edge Deflector, a simple little app that registers itself to handle a special hidden Microsoft Edge link type, passing it on to your default browser. After the first time setting it as a default, you'll never see Edge again, hopefully. And now for the bonus round. All the stuff that I think is useful that's not Windows 11 specific. Starting with Alt Drag. If you've used Linux, you'll know that this title refers to the ability to hold a keyboard key down and then click anywhere in a window to drag it around. Something that can help with productivity and is particularly useful for touch screens. It's a little old now and doesn't directly support Eero Snap, but it's got its own snap feature built in that kind of mimics it. Another app called Sizer can help with that, though. It allows you to position and size windows quickly and accurately. It's a fair bit faster than dragging the window around manually, even to use with Snap. Twinkle Tray is an app that people with notebooks and Surface devices might appreciate. It lets you change the brightness of even external displays. And while it doesn't smoothly step through the brightness levels like modern laptops, what's really cool is you can set minimum and maximum values for each monitor to normalize them. So you can control all the displays at once whenever you change the brightness. Combine this with scheduled brightness changes and another app called Auto Dark Mode. And you've got a pretty great setup IMO, complete with time-based desktop wallpaper switching. Twinkle Tray hooks into the on-screen display control via DDCCI, which is supported by most displays since the late 2000s and is a whole rabbit hole all on its own. Finally, I would be remiss to talk about de-crapifying windows if I didn't talk about power toys. These are small apps developed by Microsoft for the purpose of extending windows for power users. And some, like virtual desktops, have even graduated to flagship features today. Some of them, like SVG previews, seem like they should probably be baked into Windows without any further questions asked. But then there's others like Fancy Zones. That's an app that lets you partition your displays and set up custom layouts for apps. It's something that I would actually say is super useful for ultra-wide users and almost non-negotiable for super ultra-wide users or users of big TV displays like Linus. Microsoft even made a spotlight-esque search tool, proving that, yes, they can do it properly. They just hide it away as a power toy. Get subscribed, by the way, because, yes, we are going to be reviewing Windows 11 in its current state. And based on what you've seen today, we've definitely got some things to say. There's a ton of other stuff around, like alternative file managers like One Commander, file copiers like Teracopy, process managers like Prio or Process Lasso that save priorities and CPU affinities, and many, many more tweaks. But for now, let's turn it over to you. Are there any tweaks or utilities that you use that we didn't cover? Let us know in the comments down below. And hey, maybe we can make a regular thing out of this kind of video. Just like we make regular things out of sponsors to segways like... War Thunder is a free-to-play online military vehicle combat game that's available on Windows, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S and X with cross-play. There are more than 50 million players from all over the world, and it features an incredible arsenal of more than 2,000 historically accurate, playable tanks, aircraft, and ships from the 1930s to the 1990s. You can participate in massive combined arms battles on over 80 major battlefields from World War II to the end of the Cold War, and there's always active development with free major updates every couple of months that add even more content. That includes vehicles, maps, and new gameplay features. So head to the link below and start playing War Thunder for free. You'll also be able to get a free bonus premium vehicle just for signing up. Thanks for watching, guys. This is kind of a different video, so maybe you go check out our video on Windows 10 Ameliorated for another take on how to fix Windows. That project no longer exists, so think of it as a fun little time capsule.