I finally set up ExplorerPatcher on Windows, and I should have sooner

Windows 11 may have done a lot of great things, but many others are fairly contentious, and it's easy to miss how things used to work. Thankfully, there are a few tools out there that can restore the classic behaviors of Windows 11, and one of the best is ExplorerPatcher.

There are other great customization tools out there, such as Start11 and StartAllBack, and while they're great, they also cost money. ExplorerPatcher is a free alternative, and it's a great one at that. It can restore things like the Start menu, taskbar, and more, and after setting it up, I have to wonder why I didn't install it sooner.

Straight to what you need

Right off the bat, being able to restore the Windows 10 Start menu with ExplorerPatcher is an extremely welcome change, and the biggest reason to use this app, in my opinion. Many celebrated the death of live tiles with Windows 11, but I could never get behind that because you had so much more freedom, space, and control.

For starters, the menu is almost completely resizable, so you can adjust the height and width to your heart's content. And sure, using large tiles in the pinned area wasted some space, but you could easily resize tiles and fit dozens of apps on a single screen. On top of that, the All apps list was always visible and ready to be scrolled without affecting the pinned area. You can get to less frequently used apps much more quickly.

In recent months, Microsoft has tried to address some of this feedback, and the all apps list is now directly in the main view, just below the pinned area. It's a welcome improvement, but it doesn't address all the other advantages of the Windows 10 Start menu, so I still highly recommend ExplorerPatcher for this change alone.

The taskbar gets some upgrades, too

You can still get the weather (sometimes)

ExplorerPatcher also lets you restore the taskbar to the Windows 10 style, meaning you get individual, clickable icons for things like Wi-Fi and battery. I'm not heavily invested in these smaller changes, but what I really like is the weather widget you get with ExplorerPatcher.

This replaces the official widgets implementation in Windows 11, which is heavily based on web technologies and can feel both slow and like a resource hog, while also bombarding you with information you don't care about. Here, you get a sleek, beautiful weather widget, and that's it. Sometimes, less is more, and this looks great.

Well, when it works, that is. I've periodically had issues with this widget, and at writing time, it doesn't seem to be able to properly display data. It's possible that an update will restore the functionality, but it's hard to say when or if that will happen. The app was last updated in July of this year, so hopefully a new version is coming soon to address this issue.

Otherwise, many of the Windows 11 flyouts are also replaced with Windows 10 equivalents, which match the respective system tray icons, but in some cases, you can even use the Windows 7 version of those flyouts. And in most cases, you can also make it so that clicking one of these icons takes you directly to the respective page in Control Panel or the Settings app, so you get a little more control over the experience.

The Ribbon is back

File Explorer gets better too

The last major thing I love about ExplorerPatcher is that it can also restore the File Explorer UI to how it was in Windows 10 (and 8) with the Ribbon UI. The Ribbon puts all the options you could possibly want right in front of you, so everything from copying and deleting files, renaming them, or just selecting them is more immediately accessible at a glance.

Plus, with the different tabs in the Ribbon, you can easily do things like view hidden items, show file extensions, and more, all at a quick glance with an easy-to-navigate UI. All of these features are still in Windows 11, but the more simplified format of the new File Explorer feels less intuitive at times, and I much prefer the Ribbon.

The big downside here is that by restoring the Windows 10-style UI, you also remove Windows 11 features; most notably, tab support. It's not a small sacrifice, but it's one I'm still willing to make.

Then there are smaller things

Though some are hit or miss

In addition to these big features that make ExplorerPatcher worth it to me, there are a lot of extra tweaking options you might appreciate, too. For example, you can change the style of the window switcher that appears when pressing Alt+Tab, making it more like Windows 10 or going even simpler and removing visual indicators altogether.

There are a couple of smaller things like disabling certain keyboard shortcuts, such as Windows + F for the Feedback Hub, or preventing certain system links from being redirected from the Control Panel to the new Settings app. It's nice to get these little bonus features, even if I don't think they're a huge reason to use the app.

Some features seem to have either been broken or fixed in Windows itself in the latest releases. For example, there's still an option here for overriding the Windows + C shortcut that was used for Teams in the original Windows 11 release, but that shortcut has since been replaced, and pressing it now equates to the Copilot button, which you can remap in the Settings app. There are also features related to Windows Spotlight that don't seem to work on the latest releases, either.

You should check out ExplorerPatcher

Even with the downsides, ExplorerPatcher is an amazing app if you're a Windows 11 user. Some of the Windows 10 elements that can be restored with this tool are much better for me than what Windows 11 offers out of the box. Plus, original additions like the weather widget are also a significant improvement over Microsoft's own, at least when they work.

While updates tend to be slow, the app seems to be actively supported, so any issues should be ironed out in future updates, and it's always worth checking out what it can do for you.