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Centre your taskbar icons
It might not be a groundbreaking change, but Microsoft’s decision to centre the taskbar icons gives the desktop a fresh feel. If you like the look of it, there’s no need to wait for Windows 11 – Taskbarx does the same job, if not better, on Windows 10. To download it, go to www. snipca.com/38827, then scroll down and click the ‘Portable Zip x64’ link (if you’re running 32bit Windows, select ‘Portable Zip x86’ instead). Open the ZIP file, extract its contents to a folder on your hard drive, then run Taskbarx.exe. Your taskbar icons will now appear in the centre of the taskbar, just as in Windows 11. The only difference is that the Start button remains on the left-hand side of the taskbar (we actually prefer this since it’s easier to quickly drag your mouse to the corner of your desktop to open it).
Taskbarx also lets you tweak the taskbar further. Return to the folder where you extracted the ZIP file and run ‘Taskbarx Configurator.exe’. In the window that opens, you’ll find options to change the appearance of your taskbar on multiple monitors, change its animated effects and make it transparent (as we’ve done with ours - see screenshot below).
Snap your windows
One of our favourite features in Windows 11 is its improved Snap tool, which lets you choose how to resize and position windows simply by hovering over their maximise button. When the Snap grid appears, you can choose from four layouts, then select which section you want the window to occupy.
You can achieve a similar effect in Windows 10 with Aquasnap ( www. snipca.com/38826), which is free for non-commercial use – just make sure you select the Personal Edition when installing. Once installed, you can quickly resize windows by dragging them to different parts of your desktop. Aquasnap also makes windows transparent as you move them, allowing you to see more clearly where you’re placing them on your desktop. We particularly like the Aquamagnet feature, which makes it much easier to place two windows next to each other. As you move one window close to another, it will snap into place alongside it. To enable it, open the Aquasnap settings, select the Aquamagnet tab, then tick the top two boxes - see screenshot above left. The free version of Aquasnap doesn’t work with multiple monitors - for that you need the Professional version, which costs £13.
Alternatively, if you want to create your own window-layout templates, try Fancyzones, which is part of Microsoft’s Powertoys suite ( www.snipca.com/38828 – click the EXE file to download it). From the Settings window in Powertoys, select Fancyzones, click ‘Launch layout editor’, then choose from the range of templates or create your own. Once you’re done, hold Shift when dragging a window and your layout template will appear, letting you drag the window into the appropriate section. Turn to page 18 for details of the latest version of Powertoys.
Install widgets
The Widgets feature in Windows 11 lets you scroll through news stories, weather reports and financial information on your desktop – just click the new Widgets icon on the taskbar (see 1 in the screenshot above). You can add more widgets (click the ‘Add widgets’ button 2 ), but the options are limited to news, recent photos, traffic updates and a few others. We were hoping for a bit more, such as real-time information on memory usage and Wi-fi speeds. Microsoft may decide to allow widgets from other companies, but it killed off a similar tool in Windows 7 after it discovered a security flaw that hackers could’ve exploited to infect computers.
Last month, Microsoft started rolling
out a Widgets-style tool for Windows 10 (called ‘News & Interests’), which you can enable by right-clicking the taskbar, selecting ‘News and interests’, then ‘Show icon and text’ (see screenshot above). If you can’t see these options, scan for and install the latest Windows updates by going to Settings, ‘Update & Security’, then clicking ‘Check for updates’.
Get Android apps
Microsoft has some way to go with its Android apps feature for Windows 11 (see page 51). When we tested the preview build, the Microsoft Store didn’t have an option to view or install apps. The good news is that you can get Android apps in Windows 10 right now using a free tool called Bluestacks ( www.bluestacks.com).
Once you launch Bluestacks (see screenshot below) and sign into your Google account, you can browse the Google Play Store just as on your phone or tablet. As long as you use the same Google account in Bluestacks as on your mobile devices, you’ll be able to sync data across them.
Customise your virtual desktops
If you’ve got only one monitor, your Windows desktop may become cluttered with all your open programs.
Windows 10 includes a virtual desktop tool that lets you create multiple desktops (for example, one for browsing, another for work).
Press the Windows key+tab, then ‘New desktop’ to create a virtual desktop, then switch between them by pressing the Windows key+ctrl, along with the left and right arrow keys. Windows 11 improves on this by letting you use different wallpaper on each virtual desktop, making it easier to recognise them (press the Windows key+tab, right-click the virtual desktop you want to change, then select ‘Choose background’ – see screenshot above right).
Is Microsoft finally hanging up on Skype?
Microsoft bought Skype in 2011, and added it to Windows 8.1 two years later. It now comes with Windows 10, but has suffered countless problems in recent years, with users complaining of poor-quality calls, frequent drops in connection and other bugs. In Windows 11, Microsoft appears to be finally cutting the cord with Skype and replacing it with its Teams video-chat tool. Although Teams was originally designed as a collaboration tool for businesses (offering video chats, integration with Office and other work-related tools), Microsoft made it free to home users in May this year, with video meetings for up to 300 users. You can download it from www.snipca. com/38825.
There’s no sign of the new version of Teams in the preview version of Windows 11, but Microsoft says it will be built into the operating system, letting you start video chats directly from the taskbar.
We also suspect Microsoft will see sense and give it a less businessy name (it’s currently referring to the new version as ‘Teams 2.0’). Of course, you’ll still be able to install Skype on Windows 11 by downloading it from the web, but we wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft kills it off over the next few years.