windows10 customization!!
Category: Resources
Current mood:  animated

Hey hey :P I said a while ago on stream that i'd make a blog post abt desktop customization, and it's finally here xD I figured i'd share what i've done so far bc everyone's on this site for customization anyway, so maybe ppl will be into it ^^

so i'm not rlly gonna talk abt the stuff ppl prob already know abt (better discord, chrome themes, custom cursors, screensavers etc.), over time i've found some obscureish programs that can change a whole lot of elements that normally would be p boring. UxStyle doesn't work on windows 10 rn so I had to find other ways to make things pink xD

every program I talk abt will have a link to dl it in its title!! Here's a pic of my desktop to show u everything I have so far:



Classic Shell
I found this one a long time ago, and its main purpose is to give ppl an older windows start menu if they don't like the win8/10 one. BUT, you can also use it to give urself custom taskbars and start menu buttons (even animated ones!) I made that striped pink taskbar myself, and I took some line stickers to make my start menu button ^^ And ur start menu color will usually follow whatever ur accent color is on windows, so it'll match whatever aesthetic ur going for! You don't have to have the start menu change features enabled either, so if u just want a cool taskbar u can still use this for that.

QTTabBar
The biggest thing I've found is how to customize file explorer windows!! With QTTabBar, you can change the text color/background of individual folders, add custom pictures as folder backgrounds, and it even has cool functionality features like showing video/image/music previews that actually play when u hover over them! In the pic below u can see that with it you can go through folders without actually opening them and preview the content inside as well ^^ which is rlly useful if u have deep snaking directories like i tend to have lol


(You can also hide that extra toolbar when ur done customizing stuff if u dont want it, I just keep it so I can quickly change things again if I want to :P)

RainbowFolders
You can see in the pic above that some of the small folder icons in my music folder are colored, and its easily achieved w/ RainbowFolders! If you dont wanna dl a ton of basic colored folder icons u can use it to change the hue/saturation of a folder icon!

FileTypesMan
You also prob noticed how all the mp3 files have bows as icons instead of what they usually are, and I didn't go through one by one to change them! You can use FileTypesMan to change what the default file type icon will be for different file formats! It's a small touch but I think its p cool ^^ They've got every type under the sun accounted for, so there's a lot to customize if u want to~

 

Winamp This might be considered a more well known program, but I went waaaaaay too long w/o knowing abt it. It's basically just windows media player but much cooler, as u can make and dl custom skins for ur player! You can also use it to play videos, and it even has a built in equalizer! There's lots of plugins you can find for it as well for more cool stuff. It also has rlly cool visualization effects too! If u have a lot of local files for ur music like me then this is a cool way to listen to them! To the right is my current winamp theme~ (some of them have a lot of cool animated features as well!)

Spicetify A really cool program to customize your Spotify window!! I've been looking for something like this for a long time, so I'm glad I've found something so easy to use! I've made a blog post tutorial on how to use/install it here.

If u do anything cool w any of these, pls share in the comments! I love seeing ppl customize stuff and have nice aesthetics ^^ I'll def update this if I find anything else worth mentioning. If you wanna know where I got any of my icons or anything, lmk and I'll add them to this post. thx for reading~