How to Bring Back the Classic Taskbar on Windows 11

The Windows 11 taskbar gets worse with every release, and the widget popups and expanded Search bar aren’t helping. Here’s an idea, though: What if you nuke the whole thing? What if you bring back the Windows 10 taskbar, so you can place it on any edge of the screen, or see full-width app names again? Microsoft, of course, won’t let you do it, but a free and open-source utility will, and it doesn’t require any tinkering with the Registry or the Command Prompt: All you need to do is download and install the ExplorerPatcher app.

Once you launch it, the taskbar will automatically revert back to the good old days, even after you reboot your machine. That alone is great, but there are a few tweaks you can make to it even better. First of all, the app defaults to the Windows 11 Start menu, which shows up from the centre, even though the Start button is docked to the left. Right-click the open part of the taskbar, and click “Properties.” Go to Start Menu > Start Menu Style and choose the Windows 10 option. The start menu will still pop up from the centre, though, so go to Position on screen and choose the At Screen Edge option.

From Taskbar > Primary taskbar location on screen, you can dock the taskbar to the top of the screen. From the Taskbar section, you can also choose to hide certain buttons, and you can shift the entire taskbar to be centered (while still behaving like a Windows 10 taskbar).

ExplorerPatcher also fixes the whole weather widgets issue in Windows 11. If you want to see the weather at all times on the taskbar but don’t want all the widgets nonsense when you click on it, go to Weather > Show weather on the taskbar. Now, the old weather widget is back.

[PopSci]