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Some goodies I used to take the annoying Windows 10 desktop UI, and made it look as if it's a better one from days gone by.
Big thing is Open Shell, for start menu and taskbar customization.
This'll replace Windows 10's start menu with one designed to mimic older releases of Windows. Go into the releases section of the GitHub. As of typing you'll want to grab Open Shell's v4.4.169 Beta, released about a month ago. If you're reading in the future you should (typically) click the "Assets" button under the most recent release, which opens a small drop down menu, and click on the installer EXE. This download process is admittedly... "unique" and not very intuitive of a design decision, but it's GitHub's fault and not the program's, so don't blame them. You do get used to using it if you grab programs from GitHub a lot lol
After it installs and the program starts up, you'll have your start logo replaced with a new button. You can left click it to open it like your old start menu but it comes with a new look. To configure it, right click your new start menu button and click "Settings." It's rather extensively customizable, but don't let yourself get too overwhelmed by it. Generally you can slap your preferred style on there, under the "Start Menu Style" tab of it's settings, and call it a day. I enjoy the "Classic with Two Columns" style myself
. To customize it further it shouldn't be too hard to fiddle, just note that many settings require clicking "OK" on the bottom of the settings window to take any effect
I'd offer my preset, but it's extremely unlikely you'd have every shortcut or file path that I do. You're better off fiddling for yourself to see what you like the hard way like I had. If you don't have time, the default styles aren't bad choices either, in my opinion.
The smaller thing is the Windows 98 icon pack.
They're all exactly what you'd expect. Go to the link and click "Download All Icons" on the side and it'll take you to a big Google Drive download. You'll need something like 7-Zip (recommended) or WinRAR to unpack the archive. (Keep in mind that you only really need the ICO folder from the archive, as PNGs can't be assigned as icons.)
After you have the ICOs you want, you can right click any desktop, file explorer, or start menu shortcuts, and then click "Properties." Under the "General" tab, click "Change Icon," then "Browse" to open a window to find your icon. Navigate to wherever you put your ICOs you extracted and click whichever you'd like. Then hit "OK" and "OK" again. Should be changed now.
Sadly shortcuts don't display super consistently in Windows 10, but custom icons can definitely look neat. Personally I've noticed the shortcut's icon isn't displayed on the taskbar, since in the taskbar it seems to only care about your programs' main EXE icons.
Anyway, after some trial and error, here's how my desktop ended up.
Hope people found this article useful, and more importantly that it's understandable for you. I don't really write much. Also here's that night sky background if you want it. Have a great night/day. :)
Comments
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EnderPumpkin
Thank you very much!
Frenkli
Interesting maybe I should bookmark this for later