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What are the beautification skills of Windows? I believe many inexperienced people don't know what to do about it. Therefore, this article summarizes the causes and solutions of the problem. Through this article, I hope you can solve this problem.

As a Windows user, have you ever yearned for the simple and elegant interface of macOS, or found the default font hard to see? If so, then this article may be helpful to you. In this article, I will introduce the deep beautification techniques of Windows 10 from the desktop, taskbar, start menu, theme and font to make your Windows interface different from others.

Note: the following contains a large number of registry and system file modification operations, be sure to back up your computer data and create system restore points before use.

Desktop

The easiest way to create a simple and beautiful desktop is to hide all the desktop icons. Just right-click the desktop space and uncheck "Show Desktop Icon" in "View". If you want to make your desktop files more efficient, you can take a minority of paid tutorials on file management, and if you just want to make your desktop cooler, try the following apps.

Rainmeter

Rainmeter can be said to be the best-known and oldest desktop beautification extension software on the Windows platform. Thanks to its extremely powerful customizability, whether it is a simple or cool skin theme, or extremely polite system status monitoring and expansion functions, Rainmeter is only limited by your imagination.

As there are so many Rainmeter skin resources on the Internet, I only recommend some good places to find resources here. The first is the Rainmeter group on Deviant Art, which is one of the most active Rainmeter resource sharing communities on the Internet, with many great gods.

There is also a Rainmeter section on Reddit, which also has a lot of theme skins to share. In the Chinese world, Raindrop Beautification Community and Rainmeter Baidu Tieba are two influential Rainmeter forums where you can find a variety of resources and tutorials.

SAO Utils

SAO Utils is a Sword Art Online-style quick launch menu developed by Chinese people, which you can use to monitor system status, receive email, desktop tracking, and so on. In addition, SAO Utils allows you to quickly summon the main menu in any interface to complete a variety of operations.

Unlike the above two powerful desktop landscaping extension software, Wallpaper Engine only focuses on dynamic wallpaper. You can make your own wallpaper from pictures, videos, 3D models, web pages and even applications. In Steam Creative Workshop, you can find tens of thousands of wallpaper resources created by other users to meet all your wallpaper needs.

Task bar

Icon

If you don't like the icon of an application, or if you want to create a uniform taskbar style, you can customize the icon displayed on the taskbar by modifying shortcuts. The method is also simple. Right-click the shortcut, then select Properties, and you can find the option to change the icon in the Shortcut column. When the modification is complete, drag the shortcut directly to the taskbar.

Imitate Dock

If you prefer macOS's Dock look and feel, try transforming the Windows taskbar into something similar. First create a new empty folder, then right-click in the space of the taskbar, uncheck "Lock taskbar", select "New Toolbar", and select the folder you just created in the pop-up window.

Then, drag the new toolbar to the left until the application icon is "squeezed" to the right, then uncheck the "Show text" and "Show title" properties of the new toolbar, and drag the application bar to your favorite location, lock the taskbar again, and a native "Dock" is complete.

If you think this effect is not enough, you can download third-party imitation macOS Dock software, such as RocketDock and ObjectDock, which can give you a more similar macOS look and feel.

Start menu

In Windows 8, Microsoft introduced a Metro-style start screen, but users who were used to the old start menu didn't buy it, forcing Microsoft to reverse history in Windows 10 and reintroduce the more classic start menu. Although my personal habit is to use full-screen start menus, if you are more nostalgic for the start menu style of Windows 7 or earlier, then several apps mentioned in this section may help you.

StartIsBack++

StartIsBack++ has a lot of custom projects that allow you to match start menus and taskbars in a variety of styles from Windows XP to Windows 10. You can also use it in the start menu to quickly access the control panel and common folders, adjust the default action of the power button, etc., very sweet. You can buy the StartIsBack++, app here for $2.99 and offer a 30-day full-featured free trial.

Start10

Start10 is produced by Stardock, the developer of the famous Windows desktop sorting software Fences, but it is not only $2 more expensive than StartIsBack++, but also incomplete in Chinese. In terms of functionality, it can add background pictures to the start menu and taskbar, set fade-out effects, shadows, etc., and have a higher degree of customization than StartIsBack++. You can download Start10 here. The app costs $4.99, and it also offers a 30-day full-featured free trial.

Classic Shell

Classic Shell is a free software, but also has the typical features of free software: the core functions to you, UI can see it. Although there are many custom projects, they always give people a less exquisite feeling. However, the main function of Classic Shell is to enhance File Explorer, which can add custom toolbars, improve directory trees, and so on. You can download Classic Shell here, and the app is completely free.

Magnetic paste

In Windows 8, the background colors and icons of tiles used in traditional Win 32 applications in the start screen menu can be defined on their own, but in Windows 10, Microsoft canceled this highly acclaimed design, making the tiles colors of all Win 32 applications follow the theme color, which is very monotonous and difficult to identify.

In this section, I will take Wechat as an example to teach you to change the background color and icon of the Win 32 application by creating a tile profile.

First, right-click the "Wechat" tile in the start screen, select "Open File location", and then right-click the shortcut that appears again to jump to the actual installation directory of Wechat.

In the installation directory, we can see that the Win 32 program name for the Wechat tile in the start screen is WeChat.exe, so we create a text file called WeChat.VisualElementsManifest.txt in this directory and change the suffix to .xml.

Then, open the XML file and paste the following:

Explain here a little bit, the BackgroundColor item in the document is the background color you want to modify, expressed by RGB color value; ForegroundText is the color of the application name on the tile, there are light and dark two choices; ShowNameOnSquare150x150Logo can choose whether you want to display the program name on the medium tile; Square150x150Logo and Square70x70Logo are the two sizes of the tile icon, respectively, to the relative path of the file, you can also delete these two items.

In this case, I created a new image folder under Wechat's installation directory and put two Metro-style Wechat icons in it.

After setting up, open a command prompt as an administrator in Wechat's start screen shortcut directory, enter for% f in (*. *) do copy / b "% f" +, and enter. The significance of this step is to rebuild the start screen tile cache.

After completing the above steps, re-fix the Wechat tile on the start screen, and it should become what you want it to look like.

Theme

If you want to change the style of Windows globally, the theme is undoubtedly the choice. In the old version of Windows, an elegant theme can greatly improve the style of the system. But in Windows 10, although the app store still offers theme downloads, it basically just changes the wallpaper and colors, losing most of the other permissions.

If you still want to install high-privilege themes, you need to crack the system files. However, due to the high authority to crack the theme and the need to modify system files, it is more likely to lead to black screen, unable to boot and other problems. Given a series of system compatibility issues that may arise with the upcoming Windows 10 fall Creator update, I strongly disrecommend it. If this doesn't put you off, you can search the Internet for UltraUXThemePatcher and related tutorials, but we won't talk about it here.

The effect that can be achieved by cracking the theme.

Font

Windows font rendering should be one of the most complained aspects, it is not easy to adapt to the high screen, but the full screen of Arial is still blind, compared with the elegant and delicate font performance of macOS, people can not help but have the impulse to smash the computer.

Yes, this is the Windows and macOS versions of the same software.

Clear Type

The easiest way to change the font rendering settings is Clear Type. First open the control panel, go to "appearance and personalization of → fonts", then select "adjust Clear Type text" in the left sidebar, and then follow the system instructions to choose the clearest text to display.

Mac Type

Mac Type is a well-known old Windows font rendering improvement tool that was suspended for more than three years, but was updated again at the end of last year and improved compatibility with Windows 10 and DirectWrite. If you are still not satisfied with the training effect of Clear Type, Mac Type can be said to be your choice.

You can download the * version of Mac Type on GitHub, which has many built-in configuration files and many configuration files to share online. You can choose the rendering method that best suits you according to your actual situation.

Aero style

The Aero effect is a ground-glass interface effect introduced by Microsoft since Windows Vista, but it has been removed on Windows 8 and has even become a reason for many people not to upgrade Windows 7. If you still want to use it on Windows 10, you can try the software in this section: Aero Glass for Win8+.

The application is set up on the command line by default, and in order to make it easier to adjust the software effect, I suggest you download the AeroGlassGUI tool at the same time. If used in conjunction with the start menu tool mentioned above, you can almost restore the Aero effect on Windows 10.

OEM information

OEM information is a series of related content pre-built by the computer manufacturer, including the manufacturer's name, logo, support hotline, etc., which will be displayed in the system interface of the "Settings" application and control panel. To change them, you only need to modify the registry a little bit.

First open the registry editor, navigate to the computer\ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ OEMInformation, you should see a series of preset items, just change their numerical data, you can modify the system OEM information in the control panel.

In these items, Manufacturer stands for "manufacturer's name"; Model stands for "computer model"; and logo stands for "manufacturer's trademark". A series of other projects starting with Support are specific support information, which are not recommended to be modified in order to prevent after-sales support from being unavailable when there is something wrong with the computer.

To modify logo, you only need to change its value to the image path you want to change. It is important to note that logo must be a BMP image with a size of 120x120 pixels and a color depth of 32 bits, otherwise there may be display problems.

After the above content has been modified, the system information of the control panel will generally change immediately, and there may be some delay in the "Settings" application. By the way, if you don't want to see the OEM message in the control panel, just create a new DWORD (32-bit) entry called HelpCustomized in the registry and set its value to 1.

Cortana

If you still have the Cortana search box on the taskbar, you may be tired of reading the prompt text inside. In this section, I will show you how to modify the display text of the Cortana search box to make it more personal.

First open the registry editor, navigate to the computer\ HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Search\ Flighting, and then change the numerical data for both Current and RotateFlight to 0, thus unlocking the default settings for Cortana.

Then navigate to computer\ HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ Search\ Flighting\ 0\ SearchBoxText and computer\ HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Search\ Flighting\ 1\ SearchBoxText, change the numerical data of its Value entry to the text you want to display, and restart File Explorer. In this way, the display text of the Cortana search box should become the value you want.

Sliding shutdown

If you are using a Windows tablet or phone, pressing the power button should call up a more elegant sliding shutdown interface, but if you are using a traditional PC, you will need to use the tips in this section.

First press the shortcut key "Win + S" to summon Xiao Na, then search for "SlideToShutDown.exe", right-select "Open File location", find the application, and then right-select "send to Desktop Shortcut". In this way, you only need to double-click the shortcut to turn it off gracefully. Of course, you can also assign a shortcut to the shortcut, or dock it to the taskbar and call it out at any time.

With the above settings, your Windows 10 interface can be said to have taken on a new look.

After reading the above, have you mastered the beautification skills of Windows? If you want to learn more skills or want to know more about it, you are welcome to follow the industry information channel, thank you for reading!

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