5 Windows 11 features that need to change

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Windows 11 has caused a lot of frustration since its release, with relentless upgrade prompts to Windows 10 users and the incredible bloat of the system. It wasn't all bad, however, as it included some features that Windows 10 didn't have that users appreciated. However, there are many features that were inexplicably left out or poorly implemented, which can make it frustrating to use, and these are some of the most frustrating ones I've noticed.



5 Moving the taskbar

Why is it locked at the bottom?

The Windows 10 taskbar on a MacBook.

One of the most inexplicable feature removals with Windows 11 was the removal of the ability to move the taskbar. You used to be able to place it anywhere on the screen, but now it's fixed at the bottom and can't be moved. It was a feature that dated back to Windows XP, and its inexplicable removal in Windows 11 makes no sense.

4 Add more built-in customization options

Third-party apps are not the same

Screenshot of a Windows 11 desktop with a Start11 start menu and WindowBlinds theme enabled


Windows used to be customizable, and I've been annoyed for a long time that it's no longer possible. Back in the days of Windows XP, you could change the color of practically anything, but these days the best you can get is something like WindowBlinds from Stardock. It's a good application, but that used to be native functionality. Microsoft doesn't seem to put much emphasis on customization, which is a real shame.

3 I despise “Show more options”

Just show me the options!

Old context menu under Windows

One of the changes in Windows 11 is that right-clicking on a file no longer displays the full context menu. You have to Show more options to see them. You can actually get around this completely by tweaking the registry (or by holding down the Shift key while right-clicking), but there should really be a system setting for this. For managed devices, this isn't really an option. All you need to do is:


reg.exe add "HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\{86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2}\InprocServer32" /f You can then restart Explorer and immediately see all the options. Why is this so inconvenient?

It can slow things down

A Windows 11 laptop with the Flow Launcher settings and search bar

Another feature I absolutely loathe in Windows is the search capabilities. By default, when you search, whatever you type in will also query Bing. However, if you want something local, that's just unnecessary extra processing for something you don't even care about. I've typed “cmd” countless times only to get a Bing search for “cmd” instead of opening the command prompt itself. That's one of the reasons I unblocked my Windows PC just to disable this feature.


Since I disabled it, searches are faster, and I'm not alone in that. I've also heard from other users that their searches are faster since disabling it, which is frankly ridiculous. Let me disable it without a registry change!

1 Setting default apps needs to be changed

Now it is too complicated

The settings menu shows the default applications in Windows 11

Windows 10 and Windows 11 handle default applications differently, and I'm not a fan of how Windows 11 does it. In Windows 10, users could set six different default apps, and once a default was changed, it automatically applied to all file extensions associated with that app type. This made it easier to switch between default programs for different file formats with a single change.


Windows 11, however, takes a more granular but arguably less user-friendly approach. The operating system requires users to set a default app for each specific file type. For example, if you want to change your media player, you can no longer simply select a third-party app as the default for all media formats. Instead, you have to manually set the app as the default for each relevant file extension, such as .mp4, .mkv, and .mov.

This is great from a granularity perspective, but I feel like it just discourages users from setting defaults. Some apps prompt the user to set a default, or you can right-click on a file and Open withand save the application as the default for that file type. However, this is a frustrating change that makes setting defaults difficult.

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