There are plenty of apps out there that let you customize Windows in a variety of ways, whether it's changing the Start menu, taskbar, File Explorer, and so on. Recently, I discovered Windhawk, an app and platform for all kinds of Windows-related mods, and I really like it.

Windhawk mods can alter many aspects of the Windows 11 experience, and they work pretty well, on top of being completely free, which makes this one of my favorite customization tools. That said, I understand if you're not sure where to get started, so I've rounded up some of the best Windhawk mods for you to get started. Let's dive right in.

8 Vertical Taskbar for Windows 11

I know many have been wanting this

Windows 11 changed a lot about the taskbar, and one of those changes was to make it no longer possible to use a vertical taskbar, or to drag the taskbar to a different side of the screen. This vertical taskbar mod fixes that, giving you the option to not only have a vertical taskbar at all, but also to change the side and the width of the taskbar once it's in this mode.

It's a fairly straightforward mod, and if I'm totally frank, it's not one I personally want to use, but I've seen many people asking for something like this, so it's great to see the option is out there. A problem with this mod wis that it might not play nice with some of the other taskbar-related mods we're going to talk about next.

7 Taskbar Clock Customization

Change formatting and more

This one is more of a fun tool than something you might find truly useful, but there is some cool stuff to it. Basically, this mod lets you customize the appearance of the time and date on the taskbar, meaning you can change the time and date format, as well as the font and color used for it. You can make the text bigger or use a silly font to give your desktop a bit more personality.

One thing I find particularly cool about this mod is that it can also load RSS feed content on the second line, so you get a quick peek at the latest headline from an RSS feed of your choice. Of course, I had to try it with XDA, and it works, which is really cool to see. You can't really open the full article from the taskbar or anything, but it's still cool just to see it, and it might give you the perfect opportunity to open the site yourself if you want to read more. Otherwise, you can also enter a custom string of text if that's what you prefer.

6 Chrome/Edge scroll tabs with mouse wheel

The name says it all

Aside from the somewhat awkward naming, this is a very cool mod that affects your web browsers, with support for a few of the major Chromium-based ones, such as Chrome, Edge, Opera, and Brave. What it does is allow you to switch between your open tabs by simply moving the mouse cursor over the tab bar and scrolling the scroll wheel. It makes all the sense in the world, and it really helps you juggle multiple tabs.

Sadly, Vivaldi isn't supported, so I'm missing out on this one in my browser of choice, but I really love this simple idea. Hopefully more browsers will be supported soon.

5 Taskbar Labels for Windows 11

Microsoft could never

Windows 11 debuted without the option to show labels for apps on the taskbar, but this was rectified some time later with an update. However, Microsoft's implementation of taskbar labels pales in comparison to what's on offer with this mod.

Taskbar Labels for Windows 11 gives you a wide range of options, starting with the ability to change the font size used for the taskbar labels, as well as set a fixed width for app icons with labels, so everything looks consistent. You can change how the running indicator looks to make it centered, aligned to the left, or taking up the full width of the icon and label, too.

On top of that, this mod has two display options not available in Windows itself: combining buttons while showing labels, and not combining buttons but with labels hidden. There's just a lot more customization here than Microsoft offers, and you can play around with it to make it just to your liking.

4 Middle click to close on the taskbar

This makes a lot of sense

You know how most web browsers have a feature where you can click on the scroll wheel of your mouse to close a tab? A lot of tab-based programs do that, actually, including File Explorer and Notepad. Well, what if you could do that on the taskbar, too?

That's exactly what this mod does, and once again, it's a genius idea. It's such a common behavior in some of the apps we use the most, that implementing a similar behavior on the taskbar just feels like second nature, and it will have you closing your apps much more quickly than ever before, so you can manage the windows you do need more easily. You can even combine it with a keyboard shortcut to end the running task (as if you were using Task Manager). It's really cool.

I'm sure some users like the standard behavior of creating a new instance of an open app, and obviously, this mod may not be for you. But I close apps a lot more often than I need to open multiple instances of one, so this makes total sense to me.

3 Taskbar Volume Control

It's so much easier

You may already know that when you open the Quick Actions panel in Windows 11, you can hover the mouse above the volume slider and scroll your mouse to change it. You might also know that you can scroll your mouse over the volume icon to change the volume more quickly. But what if it could be even easier?

This mod answers that question in great fashion. Once you install it, all you need to do is move the mouse over anywhere on the taskbar and scroll, and it will adjust your PC's volume immediately. It's not a huge change, but it does make things a bit easier.

The downside here is that some laptop touchpads may not play nice with the scroll gesture, and instead, some of them will work with the pinch to zoom gestures. But for those with an external mouse, this is especially great.

2 Windows 11 Taskbar Styler

Change up the looks

Now we're getting to the really interesting stuff. There are a lot of taskbar and Start menu customization tools, but the problem is many of those tools are paid or otherwise pretty limited. As much as I love Start11, spending money on it just isn't for everyone. And so, the Windows 11 Taskbar Styler mod is great to have.

This mod lets you change up the look of the taskbar with a bunch of preset themes, with 10 currently available, but more are being added over time. There's a theme that resembles Windows XP, one that's more like Visa, and a couple of more original ones. One I kind of like is the Bubble theme, which makes taskbar elements round, somewhat similar to Chrome OS. I think it looks pretty nice here. If you're feeling confident, though, you can also manually change some elements if you know what you're doing (I don't).

It's always nice to have more customization options, and when they're free, it's really hard to complain. All I'd like to see is even more themes being added as time goes on.

1 Windows 11 Start Menu Styler

Name a better duo

Of course, if we're recommending the taskbar styler, then the Start menu styler has to be here as well. Much like the taskbar, this is a major part of Windows, and thanks to this mod, you can change how it looks in ways that microsoft doesn't let you.

Again, you have a range of options available for tweaking the Start menu here, starting with something as simple as removing the Recommended section entirely. My favorite options here are the SidebySide themes, which let you view the usual Pinned section right next to the All apps list, so you don't have to go into a separate page for that. This simply makes the Start menu more efficient, and I love it. Windows 10 had a start menu like this and I quite liked it.

This is a mod that could definitely benefit from having even more styles available out of the box, but the ones we have here are already pretty cool. And, much like the taskbar styler, you can get into the weeds of the more advanced settings if you want to get the exact look you want. This requires more advanced knowledge of what you need to change, but it's always nice to have the option to do it.

Windhawk is great

These are just some of the highlights I've found so far, and admittedly they're some of the most popular mods on the platform. In the future, I'd love to revisit this topic and shine a light on some lesser-known mods that you might still find useful, but if you've never used Windhawk before, the mods above are a great starting point.