---
title: "Windows 11 Settings You Can Access with This App"
url: https://stacklist.com/card/d541edfc-352f-4ea4-b377-c4e70d10fc7b
source_url: "https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-11-has-the-settings-microsoft-wont-give-you-but-this-app-does/"
stack: https://stacklist.com/c/technology/stack/bf7ba824-0025-419b-8f5d-40d645a4f580
summary: "The article explores frustrating limitations in Windows 11's Settings app, such as the inability to reposition the taskbar or resize icons. It introduces Windhawk, a free open-source tool by Ramen Software, as a modular solution for applying targeted fixes to these everyday workflow frictions."
tags: "windows-11, windhawk, customization, taskbar, settings, open-source, productivity"
key_entities: "Oluwademilade Afolabi (person), Michael (person), MakeUseOf (organization), Ramen Software (organization), Microsoft (organization), Windows 11 (technology), Windhawk (technology), University of Ibadan (location), Kuala Lumpur (location), taskbar customization (concept), GitHub (organization)"
classification: "analysis"
content_hash: "sha256:00e690c2d5bfaf96b37f209d2a6826c23778274cc5f1c9124aed99cfccf45c76"
acp_version: "0.2"
token_counts_approximate: 1987
visibility: public
agent_accessible: true
status: "final"
---

# Windows 11 Settings You Can Access with This App

By  Oluwademilade Afolabi Published Jun 7, 2026, 3:30 PM EDT Oluwademilade is a tech enthusiast with over five years of writing experience. He joined the MUO team in 2022 and covers various topics, including consumer tech, iOS, Android, artificial intelligence, hardware, software, and cybersecurity. In addition to writing at MUO, his work has appeared on HowtoGeek , Cryptoknowmics , TechNerdiness , and SlashGear . Oluwademilade attended the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, earning a medical degree from the College of Medicine. Excelling in public service, Oluwademilade was honored with the title of Global Action Ambassador by a student organization affiliated with the United Nations. He received this designation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in recognition of his efforts to make a positive global impact in 2020 In his free time, Oluwademilade enjoys testing new AI apps and features, troubleshooting tech problems for family and friends, learning new coding languages, and traveling to new places whenever possible. Sign in to your MakeUseOf account Windows 11 is not a bad operating system. Most of the time, it runs well, looks good enough, and does everything I need from a daily driver without much drama. That is what makes its rough edges so annoying. The issue is not that Windows 11 feels broken; it is that it often acts strangely possessive over the small choices that shape how I actually use my computer. These are not catastrophic flaws, and I do not expect Microsoft to turn every corner of Windows into a buffet of toggles. Still, too many useful options have been removed, buried, narrowed, or left out entirely, leaving you with a desktop that works fine until you try to make it behave the way your workflow already does. That pattern is exactly what a free, open-source tool called Windhawk is designed to fix. Microsoft gave you a Settings app that doesn't have your settings Windows 11 rations control like it costs money Screenshot by Kanika Gogia The frustration is specific, and I think I should come out and name it properly rather than gesture at it vaguely. While Windows 11's taskbar has some neat tricks to make it better , it removed the ability to use a vertical taskbar or to drag it to a different side of the screen. Which, on an ultrawide or portrait-oriented secondary monitor, is not a cosmetic preference but a practical layout decision that frees up meaningful vertical space. Yet, there is no toggle for it anywhere in Settings. Windows 11 also scales taskbar icons down to 24x24 pixels instead of the standard 32x32, making them appear blurry or too small on high-resolution monitors and harder to click and differentiate at a glance. Again, there is no built-in setting to change this. Pressing Alt+Tab shows all open windows on the primary display, with no native option to restrict it to windows on the monitor where your cursor actually sits. On a two-screen setup, that turns a fast keyboard shortcut into a scroll through everything you have open. The system tray also has its own annoyances that grow teeth over time. Icons for volume, network, battery, microphone, and even the Show Desktop button cannot always be selectively hidden through Settings alone, depending on your setup. As a result, the notification area can end up busier than it needs to be. None of this requires pining for an older version of Windows. These are current, everyday workflow frictions in Windows 11 as it exists today, and Microsoft has shown little appetite for treating them as problems worth fixing. One mod at a time, and only the ones you actually want It also fixes the specific things that annoy me Close Instead of relying on traditional system tweaks or risky file modifications, Windhawk uses a modular approach that lets you apply small, targeted changes to the operating system. It was built by a solo developer named Michael at Ramen Software, is available free at windhawk.net, and is hosted openly on GitHub under an inspectable workflow, where each mod is submitted as a pull request with required author metadata, giving every entry in the catalog a public identity and revision history. As of this writing, the platform has over 300 community mods, and the December 2025 version 1.7 release made the overall experience noticeably faster. That update introduced pre-compiled mods for faster installation and updating, plus the ability to install previous versions of mods, filter the mod list, and search installed mods. The installation flow is straightforward. You open the app, browse the catalog, read a mod's description, maybe check when it was last updated, and then install it with one click. Installed mods can be toggled on or off, and Windhawk alerts you when updates are available for any installed mod. Two mods from the vast list of options have made the biggest practical difference in my daily use. Close The first is Windows 11 Taskbar Styler, the most popular mod on the entire platform, and with good reason. It lets you change how your taskbar interface looks and feels via a community-contributed theming system, with built-in options ranging from translucent and transparent styles through to dock-like layouts. After installing it, you can make your taskbar translucent or transparent, or transform it completely into a dock-like bar. If you want to go further, the mod includes options modeled on Windows XP and Vista-era aesthetics, too. The mod works by using XAML diagnostics to inspect and customize the taskbar, which does mean it can conflict with other tools that use the same approach, such as TranslucentTB or ExplorerBlurMica. That is worth knowing before you install. I also installed Better File Sizes in Explorer Details, which fixes the folder size omission without sending you to a third-party disk analyzer. The mod intercepts Explorer's Size column request for a folder and either asks the Everything Search indexer for the size or calculates it manually. The Everything path is near-instant once the index is built; the manual calculation option works without Everything but is slower and best used selectively. Beyond folder sizes, the mod also fixes the way Windows displays individual file sizes, adding the option to show sizes in MB or GB rather than forcing everything into KB, and supporting IEC units like KiB and MiB if that is your preference. Overall, I like that Windhawk treats mods as manageable pieces. Each mod has its own details, settings, source code, changelog, and advanced options. I can install one, adjust it, disable it, remove it, or check what changed after an update. That is a cleaner experience than changing a random Windows setting you can only change in the Registry and hoping I remember what I tweaked three months later. Windhawk is not essential, but it is hard to ignore The obvious comparison is PowerToys, and I do think PowerToys is excellent for helping you do more with Windows 11 . It still belongs on plenty of Windows PCs, especially if you want better launchers, window tools, file previews, batch renaming, color picking, and other workflow upgrades that sit around Windows. Windhawk, on the other hand, goes after the behavior of Windows itself. Registry tweaks can sometimes do that too, but as I mentioned before, they are scattered, forgettable, and often annoying to reverse. Windhawk gives me a cleaner place to manage these changes. I would not install it casually on a locked-down work laptop, and I would not recommend it to someone who wants a purely Microsoft-supported setup. On my own PC, though, it makes sense. Windows 11 already has the bones of a good desktop. Windhawk just gives me a way to sand down the parts Microsoft keeps leaving rough. Windhawk OS Windows Developer Ramen Software Price model Free, Open-source Windhawk is a Windows customization tool that lets you tweak system behavior with lightweight, install-and-forget mods. 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