Windows 11 has been on the market for fourteen months… and it is still a work in progress. Between the bugs introduced by its updates and the performance issues associated with its security features, everything seems to indicate that its role as a “transitional” operating system is inevitable. At the same time, Redmond does not respond to user complaints about the taskbar and insists on defending an inferior design. Fortunately, there are tools like ExplorerPatcher that restore the classic taskbar in Windows 11.
And in another episode of “Redmond is deafer than Odysseus' crew”, the situation of Windows 11 hasn't changed much. Naturally, many users adopted it to take advantage of the latest features of new platforms (such as Intel's Alder Lake and Raptor Lake chips), but the default configuration of the operating system is… ugh.
The lack of official responses forces us to look for alternatives, and one of the most robust is ExplorerPatcher. This software is no stranger to us, since we have mentioned it in our guide to replace the Start Menu in Windows 11, but its development remains strong, despite the background changes Redmond makes.
Restore the classic taskbar in Windows 11 with ExplorerPatcher
The installation of ExplorerPatcher begins with a double click on its executable, but requires a few extra steps. The program will download a series of official Microsoft symbols on its own, and during the process you might lose the wallpaper or the taskbar, but everything should return to normal once explorer.exe loads again.
The result is a taskbar almost identical to Windows 10, available on Windows 11. If we right-click on it, we will find a “Properties” entry that takes us to the ExplorerPatcher configuration menu. Inside there are ten different categories, the first two being Taskbar and System Tray. There we can define what type of taskbar we want, change its physical location on the screen (yes, it can be on top or on the sides), prevent icon combination, and reduce its size.
File Explorer and Start Menu are also important. With their options we can disable the new Windows 11 context menu (which is horrible), use “legacy” dialogs for file transfer, disable the Recommended section of the Start Menu (please, yes), or force the Start Menu to open directly in “All apps”. If that isn't enough, the Windows 10 Start Menu is just a click away.
Finally, I must mention that ExplorerPatcher is not a tool designed for beginners. You have to watch its behavior very closely with each operating system update (I recommend that they be paused or delayed for several days), and sometimes we only find a black screen at first. This is solved by waiting a few seconds for ExplorerPatcher to download the new symbols and restarting the explorer.exe process. It is not ideal, but I think many users prefer that to a taskbar tied hand and foot.
Official site and download: Click here
