UI OVERHAUL
Although Windows 10’s interface is already a highly streamlined affair compared to its predecessor, it could stand to be slicker. Let’s begin, with our clean Windows install, by making it snappier, removing unnecessary elements, and making that experience all the better. What better place to start than, well, Start itself? In our minds, there’s nothing more pointless than Windows 10’s Start menu tiles. Windows 10 Pro includes tools such as the Group Policy Editor, which can help you do away with them quickly, but in Home you’re stuck with the tedious process of right-clicking each tile, and selecting “Unpin from start.” Do this enough times, click off the Start menu, and relaunch it, and that pesky right side panel disappears altogether. Clearing out the main bulk of the menu itself, apart from a certain selection of Windows’ default apps, is again a case of wading in with rightclicks, and uninstalling. Those apps that simply won’t uninstall—the monsters—can usually be excised using Powershell. See the “Ultimate Removal” box (pg. 31) to find out how to remove and, if you’re desperate, reinstate them.
There is a host of surface personalization tweaks that you can apply to the Start menu and Taskbar through the “Settings > Personalization” menu. You can change the color by first selecting an accent color in “Colors,” then checking the box to apply it to the Start menu, Action Center, and Taskbar. While you’re on the same screen, switch off transparency effects for a microscopic performance boost, then head to the “Start” tab. Because we’re old school, we favor switching off everything here to make the Start menu a straight alphabetized list of apps, but we’re not going to say you’re wrong if you like having recently used or installed apps pushed to the top. Suggested apps, though? That can definitely go. At the bottom of the page, click “Choose which folders appear on Start” to get quick links to a bunch of useful features on there. Quite why File Explorer and its ilk aren’t included by default is baffling.
Basic stuff done, let’s do some more intricate tweaking. Open up “Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced system settings,” then click the “Advanced” tab. Jump into the performance settings, and switch off everything you can’t stand to lose. Since we’re currently here for efficiency, not looks, we recommend disabling animations, fades, shadows— basically, everything bar font smoothing. Save your changes, then open up the Registry editor for a quick deeper hack. Navigate to the “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Control Panel\Desktop” key, open up the “MenuShowDelay” entry, and change its value. A flat zero tends to make things a little overcrisp (read: impossible to use), but halving the number can really make Windows feel a lot more responsive.