Classic-Start VS ExplorerPatcher

FYI, Classic Shell is discontinued, long live the https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

Finally, to get a decent start menu and context menu back Explorer patcher and Shell work wonders. There is also Open shell if you want that classic Windows 7-10 look, but personally I think it looks dated in comparison. The Win11 start menu looks fine, it's just missing core functionality.

Open-Shell-Menu is a collection of utilities that can return some of your favorite features to newer versions of Windows. Revel in the glory of classic-style features like a Start menu for Win 7, 8 & 10; tool and status bars for Windows Explorer; title and status bars for Internet Explorer. Hel_OWeen says, "I honestly have a hard time to navigate any Windows version > W2K without it."

if you don't like the new taskbar, start menu, or the new right click menu, you'll want to grab ExplorerPatcher, Open-Shell, and WinAero Tweaker which will effectively make 11 look and feel like 10 again. sometimes i genuinely forget that i'm using 11

Reddit is full of facts about them. I offer you one: how to fix classic shell: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

ExplorerPatcher combined with Open-Shell

You can use https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher to change the hotkey

> Windows 11 brings absolutely nothing on the table

It also removes a leg from the table, the one labelled 'usability'.

Attaching a 3rd-party leg to fill the gap helps (https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher), but it's not an ideal solution

ExplorerPatcher

I had more problems with it being wide, merging all app windows in a single icon, showing only icon rather then app title, and not being able to move to top of screen

That may be fixed with https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher which restores win10 bar, there's no builtin solution to any of the above afaik

Thanks for letting me know. I looked into it, and apparently it's still even possible to activate on later versions of Windows with registry edits and helper software: https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/discussions/167

Not going to install something that seems so vague, but I do use ExplorerPatcher [1] on my Windows 11 machines to basically re-create Windows 10 UI and fix all of the annoyances I have with Windows 11. I've got the old right click menu, the old task bar, the old alt-tab interface, pretty much the whole thing. Only reason I use Windows 11 over Windows 10 is because Windows 11 seems to handle my triple monitor setup better, especially when waking up from sleep.

[1] - https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher