How To Make Windows 11 Look Like Windows 7 

My grandma has alzheimers and was finding windows 11 impossible to use on her new computer. I followed your video and replicated the exact same windows 7 look and feel she had before. I placed everything exactly as it was, with the same position of desktop shortcuts, icons, backgrounds, colours etc. It has made a tremendous difference for her and I would like to thank you very much for creating this super helpful guide :-)

missed opportunity to call it “Seven-Eleven”

If you want to reacreate the translucency effect of the old taskbar, set the mode to "glass," set the opacity to about 30, and play with the color setting to taste.

Actually, it was Windows 8 when Microsoft removed Aero Glass and made Windows ugly and flat. Because the code was removed, it is difficult to duplicate in Windows 10 and 11. Attempts to do so don't make it look as good as Windows 7. There was an aero glass program for Windows 10, but it's been discontinued

Really useful, thank you. Effectively being forced into Windows 11 (need more powerful laptop and they don't have Win 7 drivers), so this will make things feel more natural and intuitive. I just wish that Microsoft would humour us and simply have an option to "Make Cosmetically Like windows 7 /8 /10 / 11" - so folks could quickly and easily select their default "feel". Crazy thting is, not only would it be easy for them, but it may have encouraged MILLIONS more people to upgrade the operating system - if they felt they would not have to learn yet another whim of Microsoft.

Thanks! I personally love the look of the Windows 7 start menu + icon mixed with the Windows 10 style taskbar. Also the slightly rounded corners are exactly what I was looking for. This is amazing!

I have been making windows 10 look and act like windows7. I did that since 8.1 was end of life which I made it look and act like windows 7 as well. I do not want to go to windows 11 do to this. Thanks for giving me hope.

7:33 press ctrl , shift , esc to bring up task manager. It's much quicker to bring up task manager

Thanks for this and I will certainly be using parts of it to get back the Windows look and feel I grew used to. But this all leaves me thinking, if so many people still prefer Windows 7, why hasn't Microsoft gotten in on this? It's the perfect thing for them. Force newer versions of Windows on everyone and then they could get more of your money offering a Windows 7 Theme Add on Service Pack. If they really wanted to take it to the limit, they could ovcer it as a subscription to charge you every month to keep your Windows looking and feeling like Windows 7! Hell, why not also offer an upgeade that has Themes for Windows 98, Windows XP, and Windows 7? The money grabbing opportunities are plentiful!

you got things wrong, Vista was first to have Aero Glass and Windows 8 removed Aero

Nicely done! Getting a transparent taskbar alone is a plus for me, I hate that win11 doesn't even let you even use small icons or shrink the taksbar down a few pixels. But getting it transparent, that alone is a win for me.

What a bunch of work you must have done. Well done 😀😀😀

What an awesome guide, thanks for your efforts! I personally don't like seeing the little gear icon in the system tray and I always hide it in the Explorer Patcher properties. To do that, right click on an empty space on the taskbar and select Properties➡System tray➡Control Center Button❌ & restart File Explorer. There are also some other settings you can change in the System tray tab to make it even more like Windows 7. Hope this helps someone!

I am SO happy to find this. I really want to get a good AeroGlass effect in my Windows 10. I haven't switched to 11, I'm gonna hold off on that for a long while, maybe forever.

You can use a windows 7 msstyles made for 10 to change the look of the caption buttons. Some windows 10 msstyles still work if they are made above 1607, since 11/10 still uses the same theming engine from 1607, which is why some themes made for 11 work on 10, and themes made on 10 1607 work on 11. Tried this and i guarrantee you, it works.

This is the operating system I used as a kid. I did this to bring back some amazing after school memories. Thank you.

As always a well documented video from you Rich. I Was not self a Windows 7 user because I had Windows XP. When end of XP support in 2014 I bought a upgrade licens to Windows 8 Pro, so Windows 7 Pro have just been used to the pc I'm having now, to upgrade it to Windows 8 and after that up to 10. My installation is still the one from 2015, just upgraded to the builds that came after that.

For me, the best option for menu and taskbar is "startisback". You can adjust start symbol, start menu and taskbar individually, between win 7, win 8 and 10/11. And it is 5 bucks.

At the time I'm watching this (April 9, 2024), there are 3.9K thumbs up for this video. That tells me there are a lot of people that are not happy with Windows 11 and came here for a solution, and there are likely many more people who feel the same but will never see this video. Why can't Microsoft respect the wishes of their customers and make this conversion available in a simple easy way?

I'm a little late but thanks so much! Such a nostalgia blast!

Excellent tutorial! I've hated the change away from window 7 from the start and grudgingly accepted windows 10 but windows 11 was the straw that broke my back. I spent an hour today on this and the only feature I couldn't emulate was the semi transparent texture 8.1 system tray....but blue is Ok too. Thanks. Edited to add: The issue with the system tray was the image I had chosen for my desktop background....once that image was changed the taskbar performed as I had hoped.

Windows 7 is the only version I deliberately bought the pro edition, because it was more interactive and productive with it's desktop tools (widgets).

I have Win7 Ultimate with all the updates installed in VMware Workstation and when I miss it, its there for me😂Thanks for the video tho, great content. Cheers!!!👏👏👍👍

12:16 That is AWESOME that Start Menu looks just like Windows 7

Nice mods! The Win 7 interface was the best so far but killing the aero glass effect was a really dumb decision. I don't understand why it was not re-introduced in Win 11 because the user can disable the effect if it's too heavy for their hardware and use the boring flat interface, but all PC's and laptops nowadays can easily handle the extra memory and processor load.

For those that don't want the color blue (or any color) on the start menu go for low opacity on skin -> glass color intensity. That's what I like better personally.

Very interesting mods! It's a bit involved, but in the end, it looks pretty convincing. I've wanted to do the same thing with Win 10, since Win 7 was by far, my favorite Windows OS for multiple reasons.😉 I'm avoiding 11 like the plague, since there are so many background data collection programs. Even if you get rid of them, they have a nasty habit of returning whenever you run updates.😡

Thanks for the video, I'm certainly going to use it as a reference. Big propz to the guys who create the themes, the theme patchers and the tweakers as well. Did something similar a few years back with my Windows 8.1 installation to make it look like Vista, which I thought was a dreadful OS but a damn goodlooking one with the right tweaks. Really didn't like the 8.1 start menu or the window style, those flat windows, window control buttons and basic colours looked like they'd been designed by a 5-year-old. Used Classic Start Menu for the start menu and taskbar, found an "Eye Of HAL9000" png for the start button. Had to try a few theme patchers and Vista Aero themes before I found a combination that worked but ended up with the whole Vista black glass Aero thing going on, including rounded window corners, the red close window button and the translucent 3D effect taskbar. It was a couple of days faffing about and a few naughty words were involved here and there, but it was well worth it and I like it. I'm still using it. Some newer programs still give me the horrible flat windows but they're few and far between. Prior to that I had a W7 netbook on which I put a very convincing MacOS Snow Leopard theme without too much trouble. Don't laugh, I think Snow Leopard is rather pretty. Maybe when I've got a spare couple of days, enough beer & cigarettes, and I'm up for the fight I'll try to Snow Leopard my W10 laptop again. The first attempt on that didn't go well...

Awesome video! Two questions: 1) How much of a resource tax comes with these mods? 2) With the Aero glass, my favorite feature was the cascading scroll using Win + Tab. Is that an option?

for some reason when i try to get mica for everyone working, even after installing .NET core onto windows it still asks for me to install it

Excellent, ive been using classic shell in windows 10 everytime.

Seems like a good idea since i love the look of the os

Thank you so much for sharing this with us I loved Windows 7 alot.❤, Also can you please in the next video show how to make windows 11 look like Windows 8.1? Thanks.

what really bothers me is that on the right side the lines of the taskbar and the show desktop button are overlapping.

Disabling the dumb old windows 11 context menu is the first thing I do on a new system.

startallback could also be used for the startmenu, start icon, taskbar and mica effect

The latest (beta version) of the free Open Shell program is 4.4.189, which includes several fixes vs. the version 4.4.170 used in your video. The "real" Windows 7 can be installed and run on up-to-date 2023 hardware. Although, if using the official Microsoft Win7 installation medium, will require initially using a PS/2 mouse until the USB port driver can get installed. Note: for Win7 to be able to boot to desktop will probably require the bios setting: CSM=enabled, although the "UEFI Mode" bios setting & "GPT disc format" should function ok. Use Rufus & the official MS free download of Win7 to create the USB installation medium. The USB port works okay during the installation phase, but during final setup the USB driver is absent, so that only a PS/2 mouse will work natively.

Tidbit: To set background, just right click picture and choose " set background" from context menu. That is a little shorter path than going through the personalize menu.

I don’t even care if it doesn’t look exactly like aero glass, since trying to do that would be pretty much impossible unlike in windows 8.1, yes, 10 has the same issue

Thank you for this video, that win 7 taskbar is so much better as its effectively extra space. Aside from also looking cool. An additional part of my reply as I think you deserve it, I have seen many youtube videos over the years where the pacing is poor, things get over explained and so forth, but you nailed the pacing, I was kept engaged through out the whole video, and your editing as well for the zoom in out of your screen is very good work. Constant uninterrupted, you are a very good presenter and I am now subbed to your channel, will check out your other videos as well, thank you.

A note on the Windows 11 background. You changed the desktop background to look like Windows 7 BUT I went one step further and use my own custom background using a picture. BUT I kept getting a random desktop background showing up which would go away when I clicked on the desktop. I did not want this, I just wanted my picture as the desktop background all the time. I discovered why this was happening. I had to make windows themes the same image as my desktop background to keep the same image on the desktop. I hope this helps other people who might have the same problem. One problem that I noticed about Windows 11 that I hate is when I am in a game on the internet or using a program I use to get to the desktop but that does not work in Windows 11 and it is very annoying. Can I change this to act like Windows 7? Another annoying thing was the split screen changing all the time because of my mouse actions but I was able shut that off in settings. Now I need to stop a window on the desktop from jumping to full screen sometimes when I move my mouse.

22:19 I think there might be. I remember during the XP/Vista days there were many theme packed programs that automatically changed the icons of the OS which even changed the icons of the tools within the control panel as well as the system tray. One of these was Longhorn Inspirat for Windows XP. However it seems that ever since Windows 8, MS has made it harder for third parties applications to apply theme/icon packages on the system and making Windows harder to customize with every single realize.

1:16 Windows vista: I'm I a joke to you?

Not sure if I'm doing anything wrong or not, or if it's just because the setup has been updated in the last three months, but the .NET thingy will not pop up when I press yes to download it. It's probably just me, but I would need some help with that. Not trying to be rude about this, but I was able to install your windows 11 to windows 10 setup.

Thanks, Answered the it's not just a start menu (startallback) one in the beginning.

Cool. Why didn’t you use Retrotaskbar?? Ps:But can you turn of that irritating oscilloscope?

Microsoft is nuts to have abandoned their old UI. Thanks so much for this tutorial. I didn't bother with the icons but everything else is just (chef's kiss) perfect.

I didn't have time to watch the whole video, but I have a question. With the extra programs being downloaded and running, does that affect performance?

How taxing is this on system resources?

thanks to this video now i managed to make the taskbar use small icons in windows 11! this is huge u should make a video on that! untaped market i say, no one i searched for online changed this without messing the time and date on the right!! using regedit explorer patcher is the way!

Thank you so much. Yes I tried the trial of Windows Blinds, I got a bit frustrated with it. I was having some trouble getting it to give me the look I wanted. I love those task bar and start menu customizations. From this video I am a little less scared to move to Windows 11. Still gonna hold out for a while though.

People are getting tired of this cold and uninviting themes companies are choosing.

Hey dude! Nice video, but I have a question - Where did you get your DLL file for the 7 at 19:42 ? Please respond, cannot find any Love from NZ ❤❤

love your enthusiasm ;D im glad i can watch these kind of content in the future!

Bit of a noob question, but will Windows updates effect the visual changes in any way?

I use the icon pack for windows 7 made by windows8.12013 or whatever, and it worked perfectly

This so cool I used too love windows 7 I really miss it thanks for the great video

nice Windows11 UI mod!....I'm going to make sure to come back here when I'm forced to use Windows 11. On 3 of my recent computers, I've been turning down the free update from windows 10 to Win 11, thinking I'd lose support of various old software or hardware drivers I still use & have installed. But yeah, the User interface of windows 11 was the other aggravation to get around. thanks for the helpful video.

When you say this is buggy, is it just getting everything working is buggy and once it's done it will work without issues or in sometime will i have to troubleshoot it and fix later down the line? Awesome guide BTW

I must correct you on 2 things: 1) Windows 7 had more rounded corners 2) it's possible obtain AERO BASIC for make it more actual; it's free and requires 2 programs: BasicThemer2 and UltraUXThemePatcher. By the rest the video was great

Watching this video just convinces me more that I shouldn't get rid of Windows 7. MS would make a ton of profits if they just updated Windows 7 to be a modern version that can run updated hardware and software.

12.02 I do not have the WIN7LIKE COMBO drop down option in the Open-Shell skin setting, despite following the video exactly. I don't know what's going on or if i'm the only one with this issue. I'm so sad about this, someone help please!! :( edit: SOLVED!!! I renamed the file and simply added .skin to thr end. worked perfectly after that :D

I cant get the transparent tray to work! I installed everything seemingly correct but its still a plain white box which doesnt show my screensaver behind it. :(

Many thanks 1 I have W10 running with Classic Shell - but isn’t it crazy how we have to go to these lengths to get an OS to behave like the user-friendly Seven?

This is awesome, thank you so much! Yes, Windows 7 was the best looking and best running version of Windows. I work in IT as well, but I have used your videos for both help and learning, thank you so much! Is it possible to make Windows 10 look like Windows 11? I know sounds crazy, but someone has asked me to do it. They asked me to make Windows 10 look like Windows 11, basically they have two logins and they want one login to look like Windows 10 and the other to look like Windows 11. They don't want to upgrade to Windows 11, so thus the reason they want to make it look like Windows 11 for one login. I exported/imported the Windows 11 Themes and managed to get some of the Icons, but I am not finding anything for start menu and the remaining icons. Is this something you might consider making a video on, or at-least replying with some pointers? Thanks again,

Thanks for the effort and all the research you did , in "Look Like Windows 7"

i need that aero glass it's so tasty

thank you so much for taking the time to do this!!

i loved Windows 7 Not just for aero it had a nostalgic browser

Windows 7 was the baby. I just installed it on an older machine, it wasn't easy but I got it to work great. Anyone who wishes to use the awesome Windows 7 3D icons on 10/11, just find a copy of W7 imageres.dll ...rename it slightly so it doesn't conflict with the current system version of it, drop it into the Windows System 32 folder. Now just update your icons to that .dll instead of the original one that is looked at by default.

Glad to see a tutorial without WindowBlinds! Good job!

This was very good and perhaps it is just me but trying to keep up with how fast you are dictating what to do and what changes to make can be tiresome and frustrating at times. I don't want to be "That Guy" but it took me some back and forth with the video to get it going. Again, thanks, much appreciated because I never liked the look and feel of Windows 8 or 10 or 11. Win7 was always my favorite and I am still reeling about it lol.

So awesome that U Show exactly how to do these things, plus u are verry good on explaining, which make things 90 times easier to get ! So thanks so much again Rich your awesome !!!

It wasn't Windows 7 theme on it, but I liked it anyways

I wish there was a way to blur the taskbar as well, since that was a thing. Unfortunately, the Openshell glass option no longer works.

It's amazing that while Windows has flattened its OS down over time, Linux has gone the opposite direction with desktop manager designs like those found in Garuda Dr4goniz3d Edition etc.

Excellent video. Thanks for your hard work.

This + the windows 11 debloat script makes windows 11 my favorite OS Ive used so far. Its colorful but super clean. I love it!

This is way better than TranslucentTB, I'll make sure the creators receive a good cup of coffee endowment

This is really informative and you are very good at presentation👍

I just used the default windows taskbar options to move the Start button to the left hand side. That's enough for me. OpenShell might be worth it if compatible, but 11 is not what I'd call a new OS. There has been little need to update. 12 or 13 will probably introduce the most changes with heavy reliance on what everyone doesn't want (AI)

Just saved your video to watch later. Windows 7 look is the best. laptop is win7 and pc is 10 pro but will probably change it, Thanks.😀

​ @CyberCPU Tech, Great video. Thank you. Customization is a whole and worthy rabbit whole of it's very own. You may want to let your viewers know about using programs such as Rainmeter and RocketDock to completely change the desktop look and feel, often in more individualistic and artistic ways. Of course this is completely contrary to the forced unanimity that Microsoft pushes and hence all the more interesting and rewarding as a result. Thanks for the videos and keep up the great work.

do not use explorer patcher on latest version of windows 11, it put me in a explorer reset loop and i had to uninstall it

Actually it was Vista that introduced Aero Glass and Transparency.

Drinking game: Take a shot every time this man says Windows 7 very nice video though

as much as i love 7 im used to 11 and really just want the aero glass looks

It looks almost exactly like Windows 7. So cool. I would really think it was Windows 7.

This is very interesting. I have been wondering if because Win 7 is not supported by MS anymore, will we be able to tell AI soon to update our copy of Windows 7 so that it comes with all the benefits of Windows 11, while still retaining the functionality and appearance of Windows 7. I have been running Windows 7 on my PC for more than 10 years. It has never crashed. It is the most useful, stable, and functional OS I ever had. It took me 2 hours to load Win 11 on a new build because Windows made it complicated. They also try and force you to sign in and sign up for things some people just don't want. IMO when you buy an OS you buy it to use freely, with no strings attached.

mine already done ;), however the Aero glass came originally with Vista, i love Windows 7 but honestly i think Windows Vista looked better

Do you use Browser Extensions? NVM. Also I would like too see both Open Shell and Start AllBack used to combined Open Shell with Start AllBack Open Shell for the start menu while Start AllBack is used make the taskbar less flat and the icons bigger simaliar to Windows 7 and 8.1 and also make the Taskbar Tabs less flat you know when you have an opened program on the taskbar.

Next video:How to make like windows 11 in windows 7 In the next video: How to make like windows 7 in windows 7 In the next video:How to make like windows 11 in windows 11

I followed the instructions and have two problems. Or is it three? First, the blue color change in Open Shell Menu, Task Bar only appears with a flash when the Task Bar restarts. Second, the "gray" colored texture appears on the left and right, then splits diagonally on the left and right with the background appearing through. Third, only the Start Menu (Windows) icon and the Programs icon appears in the left window. Only when I hover the mouse over the Programs icon doe it populate. But when I move the cursor away, they disappear from the left column/window. Otherwise, I like the tweaks, although I was getting used to the Win 11 "features". Oh, btw, I have Win 11 Pro.

I'd like windows 11 to look like windows 98 or 95 which I think was the best wallpaper and screensavers are missed

I like your show, I have been using windows since windows 3.1 (it took me a while to stop using DOS, which I liked a lot) . I always moved the task bar to the top of the page. Can you do a show on how to do this in windows 11 ?

when selecting anything in the taskbar the background for items isnt transparent, help

I happen to have issues with the openshell window. The border within the window isn't transparent after I followed the instructions. How do I fix it?

great work! between this and msmg toolkit, i might consider switching to windows 11

Can you make Windows 8 look like Windows 7 ? My dad has old computer with Windows 8 right, but the right sidebar is helly annoying, any way to disable that ? Know what i am pointing at ?

Looks great, but what about the window buttons? I watched a video about customizing to Mac OS X, and so I'm sure there are ways to change that buttons look. Also the version you made is missing glow Aero effect on progress bars (but I'm very unsure this can be achieved at all).