Guide · Customization

Windows 11 customization: the settings that matter

Dark mode, accent colours, the taskbar, Start, the lock screen and Auto HDR in Windows 11 Settings, plus PowerToys and Rainmeter. No registry tweaks.

· tama

Windows 11 lets you change more than its first-run look suggests. Dark mode, accent colours, a left-aligned taskbar, Start menu folders, the lock screen and HDR for older games are all in Settings, with no extra software. When Settings runs out, two free tools take over: Microsoft’s own PowerToys, and Rainmeter.

Every step here comes from Microsoft Support and Microsoft Learn, or from the tool’s official page, checked on October 16, 2026. There are no registry tweaks. We only include changes we can check against an official page.

Dark mode and accent colours

Open Settings > Personalization > Colors. Under Choose your mode you get three options:

  • Light. Microsoft notes that it “doesn’t personalize the color of the Start menu, taskbar, and action center.”
  • Dark, for low light. It applies to Start, the taskbar and the action center.
  • Custom, which sets Windows and apps separately.

Below that, the accent colour can be Automatic, picked from your wallpaper, or Manual. Two switches decide where it shows. Show accent color on Start and taskbar only works in Dark or Custom mode. Show accent color on title bars and window borders colours the bar across the top of each window and its border. Transparency effects have their own switch on the same page.

Some apps have a light and dark setting of their own, separate from Windows. Microsoft also notes that not every app supports dark mode.

Background and themes

Go to Personalization > Background, or right-click the desktop and choose Personalize. You can pick a picture, a solid colour, a slideshow from a folder, or Windows spotlight, which shows a new image each day. With more than one monitor, right-click a picture to set it for one display only. A slideshow already shows a different picture on each screen.

One catch: if you use multiple desktops, per-monitor backgrounds are not supported, and neither is the slideshow.

A theme bundles a background, colours, sounds and a mouse cursor. Under Personalization > Themes you can pick one, get more with Browse themes from the Microsoft Store, or save your current setup with Save.

The taskbar

Right-click the taskbar and choose Taskbar settings. The changes worth knowing:

  • Alignment. Icons are centred by default. Under Taskbar behaviors > Taskbar alignment, choose Left for the classic layout.
  • Search. Choose a full search box, an icon with a label, an icon only, or Hide.
  • Widgets and Task view. Each has its own switch under Taskbar items.
  • Tray icons. Choose which icons stay visible and which go into the overflow menu. You can also drag them between the two.
  • Auto-hide. Tick Automatically hide the taskbar. Move the pointer to the bottom edge to bring it back.

What you cannot do is move it. Microsoft’s page is plain about it: “There are no settings for moving a taskbar to the top or to the side of the screen.”

The Start menu

Most Start changes happen in the menu itself, not in Settings:

  • Right-click an app in search and choose Pin to Start. Folders from File Explorer and websites from Edge can be pinned too.
  • Drag one pin onto another to make a folder, then rename it. A folder with one pin left disappears on its own.
  • Select Show all to keep the pinned section open next time.
  • The All section has Category, Grid and List views, and Start remembers the last one you used.

The rest is in Settings > Personalization > Start. You can turn off recommendation providers there. When none are left, the Recommended section collapses and stays hidden. Under Folders, turn on the folders you want next to the power button.

The lock screen

In Personalization > Lock screen, choose Windows spotlight, a single picture or a slideshow from one or more folders. The page also has these switches:

  • Show the lock screen background picture on the sign-in screen uses the same image in both places.
  • A motion switch makes the image move slightly as the PC moves.
  • Lock screen widgets can be reordered, removed or added. Only widgets with a small size can go on the lock screen.

HDR and Auto HDR for games

If your display supports HDR, open Settings > System > Display, pick the HDR display at the top, and turn on HDR. A slider below it balances SDR brightness against HDR.

Auto HDR is the part for gamers. Some older games are SDR only, such as games that use DirectX 11 or DirectX 12. With Auto HDR on, Windows raises their colour range and brightness to HDR automatically. To turn it on, expand the HDR section on the same page and switch on Auto HDR. Microsoft also offers the Windows HDR Calibration app to tune the display first.

PowerToys

PowerToys is Microsoft’s free, open-source set of utilities for “customization options that don’t exist out of the box”. It needs Windows 11, or Windows 10 version 2004 or newer, on an x64 or ARM64 processor. Microsoft recommends installing it from GitHub or the Microsoft Store. With WinGet, the command is winget install --id Microsoft.PowerToys --source winget.

It has more than 25 utilities. These four change how Windows looks and feels:

  • FancyZones, a window manager for custom layouts.
  • Light Switch, which swaps light and dark themes by time of day.
  • Keyboard Manager, for remapping keys and making shortcuts.
  • Command Palette, a launcher for apps, commands and tools.

You can turn each utility on or off on its own, so install the set and enable only what you use.

Rainmeter

To put your own widgets on the desktop, look at Rainmeter. Its README calls it “a desktop customization tool for Windows”, and it is free and open source under the GPL v2. What you see on screen comes from skins. Our Rainmeter skins guide explains how to install one.

Risks worth knowing

  • Each change in Settings is a switch or a list that you can set back on the same page. That is the main reason to start there.
  • Tools from outside the Microsoft Store run with your account’s rights. Download them only from their official pages, linked below.
  • Registry tweaks and tools that patch the Windows shell are popular for things Settings cannot do, such as moving the taskbar. We do not cover them, because there is no Microsoft documentation to check them against.

Want to go further on Linux? Our KDE Plasma themes guide covers the same ground for the KDE Plasma desktop.

Sources

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