Like myself, you might also like your taskbar to be transparent. Especially with the design improvements that came with Windows 11, you might want to make some design changes to the taskbar. If you are used to the old Windows 7 like transparency on your taskbar, getting used to something solid may not be that easy. In this case, you can depend on the in-built features available on your Windows 11 OS as well as some other tricky ways. We are going to take a journey through them in no time.
The Easy Way
Windows 11 comes with a lot of personalization options. We can use that for changing the transparency settings of the default taskbar.
- Go to Start.
- Then click on the Settings.
- On the left sidebar, click on Personalization.
- Now, on the right side of the screen, choose Colors.
- Just turn on the option next to the Transparency Effect option.
You will notice that the transparency of your taskbar has been modified. While This will work in most cases, you might want to change some other settings available on the same screen. You can adjust the colors, as well as some other options available on the visual effects screen in order to customize the Taskbar and other aspects of Wndows 11 the way you like it.
The Harder Way
We are going to use the good old registry in order to make some changes to manually switch to the transparency mode of the Windows 11 taskbar.
- Type Windows + R keys on your keyboard.
- Type regedit in the Run comma and bux and click on OK.
- It will open the registry editor. Now you have to to navigate to the following directory path on the left sidebar.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced - On the right side of the screen, create a new file by right-clicking on the blank area and clicking New > DWORD (32-bit) Value.
- Right-click on the newly created file on the side and choose the Rename option.
- Give it a name of UseOLEDTaskbarTransparency.
- Right-click on the same file once again, and now select the Modify option.
- In the value, change 0 to 1.
- Click on OK.
The above steps will enable the OLED taskbar transparency on your Windows 11 computer. However, there is one more thing you have to do in order to enjoy true transparency.
- In the registry editor, navigate to the following path.
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\DWM - Find an option called ForceEffectMode. Just like we did in the previous steps, right click on the file, choose modify, and then change the value from 0 to 1.
- Now just restart your computer.
As soon as you restart your PC, the settings we changed will take effect, and you will notice that the transparency of your taskbar has been applied. We only recommend this method for those who have some experience with the Windows registry. Making unnecessary changes might affect the stability of your system. So handle it with care.