winutil VS ExplorerPatcher

This was the debloater tool I used on my Surface Go 3 - runs well, only minor side-effect was I needed to use an automatic fix to get defender working correctly: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

Back to WinUtil, the link above goes to Chris's most recent YouTube video on the script. Here's a link to the project on GitHub as well, if you want to inspect the code or ask the devs and contributors questions before running it. I recommend this script to everyone who I hear complaining about Windows being bloated and slow. It fixes almost everything that I hate about Windows, to the point that after using it I actually consider Windows to be an acceptable operating system to be running full time on one of my laptops.

Stuff has been uninstalled from Settings and Control Panel and CTT's Utility (to enable some settings I would've enabled through Terminal commands already) and Sycnex's Debloater (to uninstall some apps) have been used. It's nothing major as I only uninstalled apps I could download from the store if necessary and made sure not to delete any major system components except Edge maybe. I have read through every menu and setting any of these utilities has brought up thoroughly to ensure I didn't do so. I believe I did my research before enabling/disabling a setting.

Chris's Github: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

You can use Chris Titus Tech's Windows Utility: https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

The Tweaks section has a checkbox for removing Edge. I removed mine using that.

Humbly submitting Chris Titus' Debloat tool as well for comparison. I've enjoyed using Chris' tool, as the GUI design makes it easy to a-la-carte select which you want removed and not, along with recommendations. Makes it very clear to see what's being removed.

https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

The only thing different here are some inbox apps are removed and Steam + assorted drivers are installed out of the box, all of which you can do with a community installer script and community tweaking tools.

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