2 min to read

Customization: Taskbar, Theme and Visual Effects

Customization is under Windows and changes how Windows looks and behaves rather than how it performs. Nothing here affects your frame rate, and that is deliberate.

What you can change

System theme: light or dark across Windows
Taskbar position and whether icons align left or centred
Taskbar search: hidden, an icon, or the full box
Task View and Chat buttons: shown or hidden
Right click menu: the classic full menu or the compact Windows 11 one
File extensions: show types like .exe and .txt in Explorer
End task on the taskbar: right click any app to force quit it
Desktop wallpaper: keep yours or use a plain background

The performance option

There is a visual effects setting aimed at responsiveness. It drops the effects that cost you and keeps the ones worth having, so you keep animations, thumbnails and crisp text rather than ending up with the flat grey look that turning everything off gives you.

The RIP preset

One button applies a tidy default: dark theme, taskbar aligned left, search and Task View and the Chat button hidden, and your tray arrow kept. The app shows you what your desktop will look like before you apply it.

Putting it back

There is a Reset option that returns these settings to the Windows defaults. Because these are appearance settings rather than deep system changes, undoing them is immediate and needs no restart.