How I Fixed The 5 Most Annoying Things About Windows 11
Windows 10 has reached the end of its useful life, which means Microsoft has removed support for the operating system unless you agree to get Extended Service Updates. If you’ve recently upgraded to Windows 11 and are finding some of the changes annoying, here are some ways to quickly fix a few of them.
Windows 11 introduced many visual changes, and not all of them were popular. Among the less Popular is the new context menu, which swaps the classic Windows context menu for a more “nice” but generally less useful menu.
You can still Shift+Right-Click to open the old extended context menu, but why press an extra button if you don’t need it?
To restore the original right-click context menu, we need to use a registry tweak.
Editing the registry can cause problems if something goes wrong. You should consider making a backup first, just in case.
Start by opening Terminal. Click the Start button, search Terminalthen click on the first result. You can open Terminal as administrator if you want, butIt doesn’t have to work.
Now copy and paste the following command into the terminal, then press Enter:
reg add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f
If everything went well, you will see “Operation completed successfully” in the Terminal window.
The change will take effect the next time you restart File Explorer. You can restart your PC to do this, or you can manually restart Explorer from the terminal, since you are already there.
Copy and paste the following command into the terminal, then press Enter.
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe; start explorer.exe
You’ll see your screen flash briefly when File Explorer restarts, and then you’ll have the full right-click menu every time you right-click.
Microsoft also changed the layout of the Start menu when designing Windows 11. In many ways, it seems less useful than the basic Start menu design we’ve had since Windows XP. It uses a ton of space and manages to display very little of it.
To make it more useful, I use a program called Windhawk, which has a lot of customizations.
Please note: like many projects of this type, these customizations are made by the community. WindHawk hasn’t had any notable issues with malicious customizations, but it’s theoretically possible.
First, download and install Windhawk from the Windhawk website. Click the “Explore” tab at the top right, then click “Details” on the Windows 11 Start Menu Styler card. If it’s not there, just search style the start menu and it will appear.
Click “Install” at the top, select “Accept risk and install”, then wait for the download to complete.
Once that’s done, click “Settings”, select the desired theme from the drop-down menu, then click “Save Settings”. I chose Windows11_Metro10 because it maintains the general aesthetic of Windows 11 but organizes things as they were on Windows 10.
The next time you open the Start menu, you will see the new theme you selected.
I don’t use icons on the desktop, so the main way I interact with my PC is through the Command Palette or Start Menu. However, I never want to use the start menu to search. Bing. Fortunately, you can get rid of them with just one command.
Open the Start menu, search Terminalthen click “Run as administrator”.
Next, copy and paste the following command into the terminal:
reg add HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Search /v BingSearchEnabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0
If everything goes correctly, you will see the message “The operation completed successfully” and you will stop being harassed by Bing every time you search for something using the Start menu.
Get rid of the co-pilot
Copilot has been integrated into everything from simple apps like Notepad and Paint to the Microsoft Office suite, whether you like it or not.
You’ll also find that a separate Copilot app is automatically installed after some major Windows 11 updates.
When using AI, I prefer to use one that I host locally, so I completely remove Copilot from my PC. To do this, search co-pilot in the Windows Start menu, then right-click the result and click “Uninstall.”
Just keep your eyes peeled: it will likely be back after a major version update.
Get rid of OneDrive
OneDrive is Microsoft’s cloud service, and it’s pretty deeply integrated into Windows 11. Not only is it harmful, but it’s also buggy (or at least unintuitive) and can sometimes accidentally delete your files. As a result, I replaced it with a more privacy-focused alternative.
To avoid accidentally saving something to OneDrive, I simply delete it completely.
Be sure to make copies of any important files you want to keep before deleting OneDrive, just to be sure everything goes smoothly.
To uninstall OneDrive, open the Start menu and search for OneDrive. Then select “Uninstall” on the right, or right-click OneDrive and select “Uninstall”.
Once uninstalled, you will probably find that at least one folder has been deleted from Windows Explorer.
However, it’s hard to argue with the benefits of having a cloud storage solution on your PC. At least it makes saving some essentials so convenient that I’m much more likely to do it than I otherwise would be.
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I’ve been using Proton for a while now without any major issues. It even integrates into File Explorer like OneDrive does, without the buggy file syncing.
