And in another episode of "The Notepad will have Bing and OneDrive whether you like it or not", our mission to find tools that allow us to clean and optimize Windows continues. This time we discovered Shades Tweaker, a relatively young app that includes dozens of options to delete logs, disable specific modules, control services, and adjust the privacy of the operating system.
Recently we discovered that OpenShell gained official Windows 11 compatibility after two years. This is an essential development to adapt the operating system to our needs, and why not, restore a bit of muscle memory (which Microsoft seems determined to destroy). However, the fight to keep Redmond's madness at bay never ends, and believe me when I say you won't escape a tweaking session. That's why we keep exploring optimization apps, and once again we return to GitHub, where we found Shades Tweaker, a development by Berkay AY.
How to optimize Windows 11 with Shades Tweaker
The options are distributed in five categories or tabs: General, Cleaning, Windows 10/11, Windows Services, and Privacy and Security. In the first we can disable elements such as hibernation and NTFS timestamp, automatic installation of Edge via Windows Update, the SysMain service, and fast startup, but it also enables the possibility of adding a "Take Ownership" entry to the context menu.
Cleaning focuses on anything related to logs, temporary files, previous Windows installations, error reports, various caches, the Downloads folder, the Recycle Bin, Windows Search index, and the classic Prefetch. The Windows 10/11 section helps us disable Peek and widgets, restore the classic context menu in Windows 11, disable Bing in search, show file extensions, disable Cortana, and reinstall the old Windows photo viewer (this requires manual association of image extensions).
Windows Services is probably the weakest section of Shades Tweaker due to its lack of consistency. All the options that disable services seem to work well, but others have their function reversed. For example, the print queue (Print Spooler) must be "activated" in this menu for the service to become Disabled in services.msc. Finally, Privacy and Security aims to disable various telemetry parameters, OneDrive, Cortana, the Feedback Hub, online tips, user activity, the Xbox bar, and more.
In summary, I think Shades Tweaker needs a couple more updates to fix the lack of consistency and remove certain repeated values throughout its interface (SysMain control, Cortana, etc.), but once it gets them, it will be a great addition to our maintenance selection.
Official site and download: Click here
