New Windows 11 Settings Restore Customization Control (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: When Windows 11 first launched, Microsoft took away a lot of the ways you could customize it. Well, five years later, many of those options are finally coming back, along with some new ones. You can finally move the taskbar to the top or the sides of your screen. You can make it smaller, customize the start menu, and even take more control over search. I'm Kevin, and I'll show you everything that's new. Let's dive in. Let's start with probably the biggest change. You can finally move the taskbar. Right-click anywhere on the taskbar and then select Taskbar Settings. Then scroll down a little bit to Taskbar Behaviors, and here you'll see the option to change the taskbar location. Now, by default, it sits along the bottom, but you can now move it to the top. Here, I could place it on the left, or we could also place it over on the right-hand side. So feel free to go wild. Now, I personally prefer just placing it on the bottom. Along with changing the position, you can also adjust the taskbar size. Now, right over here, I could click on this drop-down, and we could change it from Default to Small. And you'll notice when I do that, all the icons are smaller, and also the vertical height of the taskbar is also smaller. Now, the same thing happens when I move the taskbar to the top. Now, there is one interesting limitation. Here, if I move the taskbar over to the left side or the right side, here you'll notice that I get the smaller icons, but the taskbar itself stays the same width, so you don't actually gain any additional horizontal space. Hopefully, Microsoft improves that in the future. Right over here, I'll shift it back to the bottom, and let's go back to the default size. I want to call out a few other features that let you customize what actually appears on the taskbar. Now, if we go all the way up to the top, we have Taskbar Settings, and you could turn different items on or off. For example, if you never use Task View or Widgets, you can hide them, and that helps clean things up. You also have several options for search. You can show the full search box, which is what I have now. Or here, you could show just the search icon, or you could hide search entirely from the taskbar. And even if you hide it, you could still press Windows together with S to search. Or even easier, just press the Windows key, and you could start typing, and that will also conduct a search. Here's one more useful trick. Click the very bottom right-hand corner of the taskbar, and Windows instantly hides all your open windows and shows the desktop. Click it again, and all your windows come right back. You can also do the exact same thing with the keyboard shortcut Windows together with D. Now, the taskbar isn't the only thing that got some new customization options. Microsoft also made some changes to the Start menu. To get to them, let's open up the Start menu, and then right-click, and here you'll see Start Settings. Let's click into that. Now, one new option is the ability to change the size of the Start menu. Right over here, you can choose between Automatic, Small, and Large. With Small, if I open up the Start menu, you'll notice that it takes up less space and also gives a more compact view. Here, if I switch over to Large, open up the Start menu, you'll notice that it uses up a lot more space. And then the last option is Automatic, where Windows adjusts the size for you. And you also have more control now over what sections appear in Start. So right up on top, I could turn off the Recent section. Here we could turn off All. And right now, I only have Pinned Apps turned on. So if I open up the Start menu, you'll notice it's a lot cleaner. And there, I just have the Pinned section. This way, if there's ever a section you never use, you can turn it off, and that way, simplify the menu. There's also a new Search setting that I really like. You can now turn off web results in Windows Search. Down below in the taskbar, click on the Search field, assuming you didn't remove it from one of my previous recommendations. And in the top right-hand corner, click on the Settings gear. Now, right here, you could turn web searches and also Microsoft Store results on or off. So over here, I'll turn them off. Now, when I search, Windows will focus on things just on my PC. So right down below, I'll click on the Search, and let's type in ChatGBT. And here, you'll notice that I just get my apps, my files, and my settings, instead of mixing in results from the web. Now, personally, I prefer Search this way. If I want to search the web, I'll use my browser. To see more Windows tips and tricks, be sure to subscribe, and I'll see you in the next one.