6 free programs for pumping the interface of Windows 11

1. BeWidgets

One of the features that Microsoft loudly announced during presentations Windows 11 has become a widget panel that slides out from the left side of the screen. It displays news, weather, currency quotes and other information.

In theory, this panel can be quite useful. But in practice, as often happens, Microsoft forgot to include support for third-party widgets. Therefore, you will have to be content with only the information that the corporation has prepared for you.

BeWidgets, on the other hand, allows you to add more widgets to the system, which will be a little more useful than the standard ones. With the help of the program, the clock, date, contents of your gallery, weather, finance and application links will be displayed on the desktop. Useful for those who want to make the system interface more informative.

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2. rainmeter

If the capabilities of BeWidgets are not enough for you, install Rainmeter. This application is a real desktop customization monster.

Rainmeter allows you to add a variety of panels and widgets to your interface: weather, CPU and memory usage, network speed, RSS news, Google search… In addition, over the years of the application's existence, third-party developers have spawned mountains of additional widgets - both simple and minimalistic, and pretentious and fancy. Open the official Rainmeter galleries at Reddit And deviant artand see for yourself.

The program contains just an incredible amount of settings and may seem complicated for an inexperienced Windows customizer, but it can be enjoyed with default settings.

Download Rainmeter →

3. Windows 11 Classic Context Menu

One of the most annoying features Windows 11 has become an inconvenient context menu that appears when you right-click on files and folders. Previously, in order to perform certain manipulations with files, it was possible to use the "Copy", "Cut" and "Paste" items. Now, obscure icons have appeared instead.

The situation can be corrected by the Windows 11 Classic Context Menu program. It brings back the classic context menu you're used to with just one click. Although it is not as beautiful as new, it is much more comfortable.

Windows 11 Classic Context Menu →

4. Fluent Search

Windows 11 has updated the appearance of the search bar on the taskbar, but, in fact, it's still the same Windows Search from the "Tens", which does not bring anything new.

Fluent Search is an example of what a search engine should look like in a modern system. It allows you to find files and programs, open tabs, and run queries in the browser. It also searches for the necessary pages in the settings.

The program resembles Spotlight from macOS, but designed in the style of the Windows 11 interface and goes well with it.

5. Explorer Patcher

Not everyone liked the new interface of Windows 11. Enthusiasts wanted to return the Start and taskbar as in the "Ten", but keep such advantages of the new system as dark mode and an improved settings menu. Lots of programs like Start10 or StartIsBack offer this feature, but there's a caveat: they all ask for money.

ExplorerPatcher provides similar services for free. After digging a little in the program settings, you can return to Windows 11 the start and context menu, the taskbar, as well as the taskbar menu as in the previous version of the system. This is a very useful tool if you have a hard time getting used to innovations.

The only but: in ExplorerPatcher no Russian language. However, understanding the parameters is not difficult at all.

Download Explorer Patcher →

6. Wally

Standard Windows 11 backgrounds get boring very quickly, and Wally allows you to fix this problem. The program can change the wallpaper by downloading pictures from a popular service Unsplash. With it, your desktop will always have beautiful views of nature, pictures of cities, as well as original photographs of people, animals and objects.

Favorite pictures can be saved to the "Pictures" folder, so that after a while they can be put back on the desktop.