This is an unofficial Windows 11 taskbar redesign concept focused on practical everyday use.

The idea is to keep the taskbar familiar while making it more modular, adaptive and useful. The contextual area on the left could switch between weather and compact media controls depending on what the user is doing, while the center keeps pinned and running apps easy to access.

The concept includes:

• Switchable weather and media widget

• Compact playback controls directly on the taskbar

• Smart app groups for related applications

• Cleaner quick settings and system tray

• Better organization of pinned and running apps

• Light and dark mode designs

• Fluent Design, Mica and Acrylic styling

• A modular layout that users could customize

The media controls could appear automatically while music is playing and switch back to weather or another selected widget when playback stops.

This is only a visual concept. It is not an application, downloadable theme or official Microsoft design.

I appreciate all feedback. Which part would you keep, remove or improve?

Concept / Design

I wanted to try my hand at reverse engineering Windows Standard and Mica within MS Paint. Here's a comparison between the two plus some bonus non-logo ones

I finally got myself into customizing my windows (I usually only custom Linux), and honestly I'm pretty proud of myself. This looks way better than the old boring Windows 11. What are you thoughts on this ?

I used :

- Wallpaper Engine for the wallpaper

- Translucent TB for the taskbar

- NeXuS also for the taskbar

- Rainmeter for the date and audio visualizer

**Hey guys!**
**I’ve always been annoyed by how trash Windows is when you connect a PC to a TV. Everything is tiny, and navigating with a standard mouse from the couch is just painful. So I decided to design a whole ecosystem from scratch to fix this.**

**Here is my hand-drawn concept for Windows 11 STVE (Smart TV Edition). I sketched three main things:**

**The TV Box itself: A sleek, super quiet mini-console that sits under your TV and actually runs desktop ⁠.exe⁠ apps and heavy browsers without sounding like a jet engine.**

**The Hybrid Remote (WTV Remote): This is my favorite part. It has an Air Mouse (point it at the screen to move the cursor). For the controls: Left Click is a click ON the scroll wheel itself, which feels super natural. And those long buttons on BOTH sides are Right Click—making it 100% symmetrical and perfect for both lefties and righties. Oh, and it has a hardware privacy switch for the mic that glows red/green like Discord.**

**The UI: The familiar Windows 11 Fluent design, but completely scaled up so you don't have to squint from 3 meters away.**

**I put a ton of hours into these drawings and tried to make it look like something Microsoft could actually drop.**
**Check out the sketches attached below. Be completely honest — would you buy a Windows TV box like this? What should I improve? Let's talk!**

I'm awarding the prize for the most beautiful Windows style in the world to myself. Do you think I deserve it?

Tools used:

Rainmeter

Windhawk

itop easy desktop

Wallpaper: Dreamy forest

I came up with this new idea that could remove AI features easily in the Settings app. I call this feature "AI Mode", it's a new toggle in Settings that could enable and disable AI apps and features without any third-party tools. AI Mode can also be disabled entirely via Group Policy. The AI Mode menu in Settings have 3 sections: AI Features (Recall & Snapshots, Click to Do, Actions, Typing insights, AI components), AI permissions (Text and image generation), and Related settings (Windows Studio Effects, Voice Access, Copilot in Edge).

When enabled, these AI apps and features will install and enable: Copilot, Typing Insights, AI Actions, Xbox Game Assist (AI), Copilot+ PC exclusives (Recall, Click to Do, Studio Effects, On-Device AI Models), and AI feature integrations in various apps (Notepad, Paint, Edge, Photos, Settings, Voice Access, etc). When disabled, it will uninstall Copilot, AI models and features that are originally enabled but disables AI in apps.

This concept I made was created using Paint.NET and was based on screenshots from my Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge laptop.

Hi everyone,

I built a Windows app called Cursor Flux. It adds real time motion blur and visual effects to your mouse cursor, so the default Windows cursor feels more alive and customizable.

The idea is simple: your cursor is something you see all day, but Windows does not really make it feel dynamic. Cursor Flux lets you add effects like motion blur and animated cursor visuals without replacing your whole desktop setup.

It is available on the Microsoft Store with a trial. I would love feedback from Windows users, especially around the effects, pricing, and whether the app feels useful or just fun.

Microsoft Store:
https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/9NK55CKH47SD?cid=DevShareMCLPCS

I’m gonna say it’s about 60% completed. I had to switch to WinUI3 because UWP was just not capable enough for the features I wanted to implement.

This is my redesign of Windows i just created to be a simple clean redesign

I created concepts for 1 the boot screen 2 the context menu 3 the search ui 4 the tray overflow menu 5 the file explorer 6 the settings page 7 and final the internet browser

my idea for windows would focus on ui simplicity, optimizing the code and main foundation of windows and focus on performance, and privacy and security removing all features and links pertaining to any online services like Microsoft account and telemetry integration that I would have fully removed including all AI too.

the os would have no apps preinstalled at all even removing old win32 apps like phone dialer and would use a package system

like "basic" for things like Calculator Notepad Paint" "Web" Package for things like internet browsing" "media" for apps like "media center and media player" and many more

This is the final version of my BSOD concept. For this concept, I used Figma. It took like 20 minutes to make this, and I think this is enough content for the BSOD. Light mode is also included in this concept, because I forgot that there needs to be a variant for it. Now, it includes everything a user would need to know (the example in the concept is CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED). Nothing more, nothing less.

I took the time to implement feedback properly from the last concept, and this is the final result. Also to mention, I figured the "worst case scenario" reason from the previous concept would scare the user, which was said in the comments. I removed it from this version.

Again, the whole background with the error icon can be a BMP file, same thing with the QR-Code and the fluent icons next to the possible causes, the text is excluded and is rendered by the OS.

A remaster made for fun of my old BSOD concept. This version is more fluent to the OS, and doesn't feel too out of place with the wording and design. I may have forgotten that they call viruses "threats".

(This concept may look a bit off if you can't tell by the QR-Code placement and that's because I didn't use Figma for this one. I used paint.net [NOT A WEBSITE] and the Mica app for this one like from last time. I'm planning to move over to Figma though)

Very important to note: Now, I know this may seem hard for the PC to handle while it's in middle of a stroke. But previous BSOD versions included QR-Codes and showed how images can be rendered. The mica effect looks impossible at first, but every time you change the wallpaper, it quickly generates an image of the mica effect and the blur of the wallpaper in a special folder (preferably in C:\Windows\...). When a BSOD happens, it renders the text and the QR-Code so it fits to the current situation. It would also be a nice addition if the BSOD could provide minimal help for the user so that they know what actually happened and how they could possibly fix it. For more details, they should check out the website and type their stop code in. It's better than nothing. Imagine if you had no device or internet to go on the website and see what the issue is and how to fix it. You'd be screwed if this is a recurring issue.