The beauty and terror of modding Windows
windowsread.me
windowsread.me
A long time ago, I used "7+ Taskbar Tweaker" that added a lot of nice things to Windows 7, like reordering the tasks in the taskbar. Now I'm remembering that the best feature was to ungroup the windows of the same task, that was super nice to edit two documents in Word
It used a lot of magic, probably overwriting dll calls in the kernel of Windows. It looks like it only partially support Windows 11 https://ramensoftware.com/7-taskbar-tweaker
There is a difference between grouping and combining, and 7TT provided many more options.
Way to make me feel old! I'm still using it!
> …to Windows 7
Aah that's better.
The tool still works on 10 btw, and offers some options not available otherwise - eg properly narrow taskbar when vertical (about small icon width wide).
Yeah, just as I can "choose" to root my Android phone. I can do that, yes, but the result will be that Netflix, banking apps and most games refuse to even start.
- Slick Window Arrangement (better window snapping): https://windhawk.net/mods/slick-window-arrangement
- Better file sizes in Explorer details: https://windhawk.net/mods/explorer-details-better-file-sizes
Personally, I wouldn’t want to have it automatically, because sometimes you have really long file names, or other columns that can get arbitrarily wide. There would also have to be a configurable maximum column width.
If it's not for some specific games or programs, I don't see a single reason to still use Windows in 2026.
And typing ALT 0151 to get an em dash, I mean seriously?
For someone typing accents and em + en dashes on purpose — well before it becomes an AI’s trait — it’s so infuriating, I can’t believe people type books on Windows. All this while macOS solved this, built in the OS, since ages now…
https://ilyabirman.net/typography-layout/
It has been available for 20 years. To use combining characters (and client-side font layout and rendering), type the letter, then one of available dead keys two times (e. g. `a, AltGr+Shift+6, AltGr+Shift+6` gives â). To get the single code point (if it's available), type modifier once, then the letter (e. g. `AltGr+Shift+6, a` gives â). I've been touch typing em dashes for years, and can't imagine it any other way.
It seems that corresponding Russian installers are more up to date. You can gently nag the author to update the English version, or just take the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, and do it your way. Be aware that certain silly applications use hard-coded keyboard shortcut handlers that bypass the system, and therefore misbehave if system layout is anything else but default US English. Windows also sometimes likes to resurrect the deleted default layout until the last process that used it exits, or something like that.
It has been said multiple times that the absence of proper typography on personal computer keyboards is just laziness, ignorance, and lack of leadership. There are no technical reasons for that — just look at keyboards for European languages.
It's a corporate operating system, not a user operating system. If you want to customise your desktop experience and have a stable time of it - this is not your platform, sorry. There is really only one platform for customisation: linux. Because distros and software there have been _designed_ around user choice.
Hacks are cool, but inevitably open up vulnerability pathways, not to mention issues with stability and being able to receive security patches, rolled into windows update. It's fine if it's just a personal pc you can reload at any point, but it's pointless for a machine that you require to keep functioning (eg a work machine, or, my personal machine, which does stuff like organise media on a regular basis).
At least older versions of Windows were quite modifiable: not as radical as on GNU/Linux, but there were a lot of possibilities.
Rather with the arrival of smartphones and rising popularity of macOS (which all were rather about "enjoying" a prescribed user experience), Microsoft did a U-turn and started applying this (anti-(?))pattern to Windows, too.
A huge chunk of the population can’t afford to make that jump, or don’t have the will to learn a new OS.
This was a major concern for me when I first installed Windhawk, too.
Since I only use a couple mods for Explorer, I ended up simply excluding every process from injection and explicitly including explorer.exe only. This can be done by going to advanced settings, setting the process exclusion list to nothing but an asterisk, and then adding explorer.exe and any other specifically desired processes into the inclusion list.
I've completely disabled explorer.exe from running; among other things it disables the win11 openwith dialog from opening. Replacing with the win10 onew orks, but it'll regularly be replaced with the 11 one by Windows. Any solutions?
So since every major Windows update functions as a core OS reinstall, your hacked setup will be restored to a clean slate.
You have two choices: Accept this limitation or move to another OS, there's no in-between.
What are the chances.
TIL those exist (genuinely).
I’ve never met anyone who likes windows, just people who put up with it for work/gaming and people who doesn’t care about the whole thing enough to move from the default (which is totally understandable).
He was also really good at Microsoft Word, unironically - he made extensive use of custom styling and could format an assignment paper in like 30 seconds. He was super useful in group projects.
I used to laugh at the LaTeX masochists in college spending 15 minutes just to put a picture where they wanted the picture to be. They had to add like four 1-character modifiers to the "insert image" command, each of which meant "yes, really here", "no, don't move it to the next page" and "nono, really really here".
MS Word is properly great if you only use the custom style rules (basically CSS classes) at the paragraph level, and never directly apply styling (basically inline styles) except for super basic stuff like making a word italic. Has great referencing tools etc, fantastic formula editor and so on. And, well, you can use ultra modern human-machine interaction technology such as a mouse to choose where a picture goes and how big it is.
(They might've enshittified it since; the last paper I wrote was in 2010 and Word was pretty damn decent back then)
I'm pretty much still on the same setup now, Win11 plus touchscreen. You'll pry my touchscreen out of my cold dead hands. How will I rage-close a "try chrome" popup without a touch screen? You ever try to rage click something with a touchpad? Total non starter.
Often Esc works.
MS word also has character styles (like a CSS style on a <span>). IMO you should use instead of bold or italic.
(There are three more types of styles: linked, table and List. See https://office-watch.com/2022/word-five-types-styles/)
But yeah for layout, ie headings and the likes, only ever use the styles, never "bold, bigger bigger bigger". Don't touch the line spacing button, etc etc.
IMO Word could do with a mode where those buttons are simply hidden. Want a bigger, fatter heading? Edit the heading style. There's no other way.
I really didn't have to care about formatting my master thesis with LaTeX. I had some friends who used Word. They had _a lot_ of "fun".
That said, for work I've switched to Linux full-time years ago. Native containers are a killer feature for me, and the different UX and driver/dependency/repository issues aren't significant enough to make me want to go back to virtualization in Windows.
They're not like a car enthusiast who loves their MX5 out of its sheer beauty and feel, but rather they love their SUV because of it's big boot and because it gets them where they need to be, and thus are perfectly happy to tear out the old radio and uncomfortable seats.
The only difference is that car enthusiasts have many more options to choose from, while in OSes, if you're stuck with Windows, you're usually really stuck with it. Linux is certainly an option, but not one that is universally practical to apply.
For most people I'm sure computers are a tool not an identity.
These days whenever I use Windows I install bash and use a terminal so I don't really care about the window management, other than maximizing windows.
And then I use my touchpad to switch between virtual desktops and the jerky animation reminds me why I prefer to run non-game Windows applications remotely from a Mac.
You could even do a lot of kernel-level shenanigans with relative impunity thanks to its layered design. You could do some amazing stuff.
As an example, SWSoft released container ("lightweight virtualization") support for Windows in 2005, before containers were even a thing in the mainline Linux. They did that by adding a layer of redirection on top of the kernel objects without having access to Windows source code.
To give an example: I use AutoHotkey, it's a scripting language for Windows that allows you to do a bunch of things. You can customize the keyboard, mouse, you can create menus and toolboxes, you can target specific applications inside. It's a fantastic tool. But it isn't available for Linux for obvious reasons; Linux is much more fragmented. You need like 3 or 5 different programs to achieve the same result in some cases, depending on your given script.
In other words: debloating Windows and customizing it is considerably easier than installing Linux. Let alone some really good software you end up finding along the way: Everything, which is an amazing search program that allows you to create custom categories and the like. EmEditor, which is really good software to open and visualize really large text files, like it can open a 4GB txt with no problems.
About the last sentence:
>If customisability is important
People value both things: customisability but also they value their time (of not having to come up with a new workflow), they value the programs and workflow they already learned to use through the years, and so on and so forth.
Where is Autohotkey for Linux?
And let's not forget about all the apps that just don't run. You simply can't customize your OS to the same level of overall comfort, so you start with a better base and tweak away
The concept for something that combines AHKs scripting/automation functionality with the key remapping doesn't really exist on linux, because there isn't any need for it. You achieve the same result by calling the functionality present in a variety of different programs via a script or small program that links everything - this is the (superior) UNIX way.
Key remapping daemons such as keyd exist, as do a wide variety of extensible/scriptable window-managers/desktop-environments. Almost all of these will contain well documented interfaces and IPC methods which allow you to build anything you can imagine in the context of GUI window manipulation/management. If you're lazy, or don't have time to learn the syntax, any recent AI code helper will most likely oneshot your request - my 16 button mouse has various common GUI window management actions assigned to it(that you might expect something like AHK to handle), and only a couple took longer than a few minutes to implement.
Because you can't. You just missed the critical word "instantly"
> because there isn't any need for it
No, because you reject the obvious need for it
> via a script or small program that links everything
That's what AHK does
Oh, brother, preach (and not only PC, where is Mac Airhawk?)! But the OS devils won't be affected!
Windhawk is indeed a savior in making some of the UI crimes committed with Windows 11 upgrade at least palatable
> A locked-down operating system — like Microsoft’s Windows RT — wouldn’t allow you to do anything like this.
But it could! It could allow native styling just like a windhak mod does, without the security concerns! There is no inherent contradiction here
So this is just defeatist, especially given the fact they kill useful features they've already delivered:
> Microsoft can never deliver every feature people want as part of the Windows operating system. It’s just not possible.
So, let it deliver the possible 80%? Would still be a huge improvement!
The article mentions ExplorerPatcher -- the changelog [1] of that project is informative. Every release involves fixing a bunch of things that Microsoft broke, intentionally or not. Some of this is understandable given how it (necessarily) messes with low level OS components, but there is still zero transparency and you just need to roll with whatever changes. I can't imagine doing that kind of work anymore.
Back in the day you could use nLite and the like to replace W98's shell with the Windows 95 one, but keeping the compatibility. On GNU/Linux and BSD, you could use FVWM instead of bloated environments, or Fluxbox, IceWM... and still run things fast.
With current Windows tons of components are interleaved.
We shall ask this question for Windows itself, given its past record.
I've done it before on Windows 7. Resized system clock, resized start menu button, removed "Terminate batch job (Y/N)?" warning in cmd, etc.
Most annoying is that VirtualBox stops working with the patched uxtheme.dll.
...
Life on Linux is great. My modifications stick for as long as I want. Permanently if I get my patches upstream.
You can just run Windows in a VM and reset the VM to an older state when Microsoft messes up your settings again.
But I rarely use Windows. I used to like it but for me XP was so ugly and bloated I switched to Linux and OS X full-time. I've never looked back.
I just play occasionally to keep my skills vaguely current. Sometimes I need to work with it.
Windows 11 is awful. Bloated, full of ads and nags, forcibly keeps your stuff in the crappy MS cloud drive for which there's no Linux GUI client.
You can't even put the taskbar on the left edge where it belongs.
Worse than Vista or Win ME or even Win 8.x.
I moved all my emergency Windows partitions to Win10 IoT LTSC. Quite unbloated, proper local accounts, no Store, no Onedrive, no Modern apps at all. It's what Win10 should have been.
And it's getting updates until 2032.
So, Windhawk looks fun but I don't need it.
I almost never use Windows, and I don't want things like WSL or Docker anyway. I mainly keep it around for things like upgrading firmware, occasionally flashing new ROMs onto phones, stuff like that.
I tried the MyWhoosh virtual-cycling app on one of my boxes.
I was able to download and install the Windows Store direct from Microsoft with no problem at all.
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9wzdncrfjbmp?hl=en-GB&gl=I...
(I just Googled that link -- it might not be the right one. MyWhoosh is only available on the Store. It refused to run on my elderly GPU anyway, though.)
Thanks for the warning, though!
wsreset -i should do it
Is this some sort of fetish thing?
Why is this not possible.
You can also add shortcuts to folders in the taskbar and use Win+Digit to open them.
Will try the shortcut method - thanks for that!