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Tweaking Windows 10 – Version 20H2

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Customize The Desktop

Oh man, where do I start…
Because even at this point, 5 years on, Win 10 isn’t close to being finished. Many settings are in 2 different places (or more). Usually at least some settings are in the same place they were in previous Windows versions, but some settings are in the new Settings app.

Display Settings
Right-clicking the desktop reveals two controls for the display. Right-click Desktop > Display Settings opens the Display page under the System menu of the Settings app and controls for brightness, color, and scale. Right-click Desktop opens the Personalization menu of Settings app and controls for background, colors, the start menu, and taskbar, among other things.

The Start Menu
The vast majority of Windows users rebelled against Windows 8 Metro design and lack of start menu. Microsoft brought back the Start Menu in Win 10, but it wasn’t quite what we asked for. This section will show you how to tweak the default Start Menu as well as explore a third party option.

Default
Gone is the Windows 7-style start menu. Microsoft just can’t seem to live without tiles.

Lots of options. By right-clicking you can: remove, resize, turn off, and uninstall.

See the All apps button just above the Start Menu button? Click it to get the All Apps menu.

Here you can add that app to the regular Start menu or taskbar via right-click.

 

Start Menu Settings
Click on the Notification Center / Action Center icon > All settings > Personalization > Start.
Here you can tweak your settings. Turning everything Off will strip the Start menu to the basic settings.

Start Menu Groups

You can create your own groups in the start menu.
Just drag one tile on top of another and release.

Stripped
Here is my Start menu with everything unpinned, uninstalled, turned off. To resize the Start menu, slide cursor over the right or top edge and click / hold / drag.

 

The Win + X Menu
Earlier I said there were 2 start menus. Alternatively called the Power Menu or the Power Users Menu, I call it the Win + X Menu. If you right-click the Start button or press the Win + X keys, you get this.

This is a very useful menu, but you can make it more so. There is a program by the fine folks at Winaero called the Win+X Menu Editor for Windows 8 that works just fine under Win 10. Below I added a few programs and removed a few too.

 

3rd Party Start Menus

There are many start menu replacements for Win 10. It’s the only one I use and will be the only one I cover.

Start10

Start10 is my preferred Start menu replacement. It costs $5.

More tweaks can be found by launching Start10tweak.exe.
64bit folder – C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock\Start10
32bit folder – C:\Program Files\Stardock\Start10

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  4. Edward Kiefer says

    I notice in your Wise Disk cleaner part your showing version 8, there at version X which has Windows WinSxS (not show in version 8).
    not a big deal but thought I mention it.

  5. Steve B says

    Hey Eric,

    I guess gone are the days where we would pour thru Black Viper’s tables to figure out what to disable. Kudos to BV of course, but it’s nice we don’t have to worry about Windows services all that much anymore.

    I would recommend disabling 2 additional services — Remote Registry (maybe I’m old school and this doesn’t matter anymore, but the name of the service is still downright scary), and Connected User Experience & Telemetry (thanks but no thanks MSFT).

    Great guide and thanks as always for your efforts,
    Steve

  6. Richard Freeston says

    I’ve noticed a small typo on page 17 under File History. The seventh word has an extra ‘s’ in it (constinuously).
    Also the grammar of the first sentence does’nt seem quite right. I suggest leaving out the second and third words.

  7. 7 says

    Eric: The registry hack for removing the word “Shortcut” from new shortcuts doesn’t seem to work in my version of Win 10 Pro 64b (20H32 v19042.746 Experience pack 120.2212.551.0). Instead the hex for link appears to operate as an incrementing count. For instance, say the Hex is showing 17 00 00 00 when I open RegEdit; I can set the Hex to 00 00 00 00 but on restart it shows 18 00 00 00. I wonder if it’s me, or MS?

    • Eric (a.k.a. TweakHound) says

      Try:

      Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

      [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
      “link”=hex:1e,00,00,00

  9. Rita R. says

    (Libraries) Just an FYI copy pasting the folders to a new location is an unnecessary step. The move dialog will do the work of moving the files in those folders for you, save yourself a couple of seconds and an insignificant amount of bytes on the web.

    Peace, Love, Donuts,
    Rita

    • Eric (a.k.a. TweakHound) says

      A folder with the name of the library needs to exist in the location you want to move it to. The files are still moved. Copy/paste is just as fast and easy as your way.

  10. Rita Rodriguez says

    Since Windows 10 is funky, if anyone reads these comments I have something to add, particularly for y’all gamers.

    #1 Heed the warning and /do/ not remove windows apps from your machine with O&O, user only is enough. It deleted my app manifest so a batch reinstall did not work, and couldn’t find a way to restore it. Windows Store works fine for everything but Cortana, you need to do an extra step to get her back, even if only to disable, its a windows 10 trend that follows to my next suggestion.

    #2 Go into gaming settings and just disable Game Mode/Game bar, don’t remove the app from user or computer. While it has no affect, every game you run calls the game bar and will pop an error saying its missing, I assume it has to do with the processes that start up Full Screen Optimizations calling game bar as well, regardless if its disabled it will never load. It is safe to uninstall the console companion.

  11. DanS says

    In 20h2 there is no longer the option “sign in with a local account instead” after you have signed in with a Microsoft account. I had a coworker do this by mistake and now I cannot remove his Microsoft account from the workstation. Is there a way to manually remove the Microsoft account?

  12. Michael Damian says

    Hi Eric,

    you may provide a reg-hack which patches the Windows 10 version number (not product key) to a recent one?

    Reason:
    MS does not deliver any apps via [Get], in my case today the free HTML5 Video Downloader by Arcadio Garcia (link below),
    if they do not meet version # 10586.0 at least.

    Last December I updated the OS for the sake of another app which left me in a total language mix, missing device and BT manager, a deliberate removed group policy editor (gpedit) but a proper reinstalled Cortana, Edge and all the other stuff MS cr*ps users lawn with.
    Hence I re-installed my former shutupped/winslapped and outbound firewall protected v10240 again but been left in the rain
    now when it comes to add simple addons from MS.

    There is no rason whatsoever a downloader or else shan’t run on even older version than mine, just the usual
    MS ignorance driven by complacency.

    Your sincerely
    Michael Damian