Windows 11 is far from a perfect operating system, and there are a number of tools out there to help you tweak and customize its behavior and appearance to fit your needs and preferences. Winaero Tweaker is one great example of these tools. It actually predates Windows 11 by quite a bit, but it's still a useful tool to this day, allowing to change settings that are otherwise not easily accessible.

While there are dozens (if not hundreds) of things you can change using Winaero Tweaker, I have a few favorites that I like to change on my PC. Some of these options are available through regular Windows settings, so while I want to highlight my favorites, I'll try to avoid listing things that can be easily changed out of the box and focus on the changes that are made significantly easier with Winaero Tweaker. Let's get right into it.

Enable classic context menu

Avoid the Registry Editor

You may already know that it's possible to bring back the classic context menu on Windows 11 if you don't like the modernized design, but typically, this requires you to go into the Registry Editor and make some changes. This can feel a bit daunting to less experienced users, so Winaero Tweaker makes things a lot easier.

Simply go to the Classic Full Context Menus section on the sidebar and check the checkbox, then click Restart Explorer to see your changes applied. When you right-click anywhere in File Explorer or the desktop, you'll now see the old-school context menu with all the options you'd expect. You can just as easily disable this feature if you change your mind, too.

Add stickers to the desktop

An extra degree of personalization

Remember that over three years ago, we reported that Microsoft was working on a feature to let you add stickers to your desktop background for an extra bit of flair? All this time later, such a feature still hasn't rolled out in any official capacity, and the wait is getting kind of old.

Well, as it turns out, the feature is still built into Windows, it's just remained hidden all this time, and Winaero Tweaker can bring it back to the surface. Just head on over to the Enable Stickers foir Desktop Background tab and enable the checkbox. You'll need to sign out of Windows and sign back in, but once you do, you can right-click your desktop to find the Add or edit stickers option.

There are actually a lot of stickers available to help decorate your desktop, so it's kind of interesting that Microsoft hasn't felt compelled to make this properly available. if you're the kind of person who likes livening up your PC, this is a very cool feature, and you have a lot of options available to you here. Hopefully, this will become a proper feature in the near future.

Disable background apps

Microsoft Store apps are a little different

Typical Windows apps need to be started in order to run in the background, and even if some can run automatically, you can usually find the startup tasks that make those programs run and disable them relatively easily. Most apps are fairly transparent running at startup. But "modern" Microsoft Store apps are a little different; by default, as soon as your PC is on, these apps can be running in the background to send you notifications or keep certain features working. They're kind of like phone apps in that way.

But computers aren't phones, and we don't always want apps running in the background like that. While you can restrict background activity for apps individually through the Windows Settings app, Winaero Tweaker has a single toggle that lets you turn off background activity for all Microsoft Store apps in one go. This might save you battery life and annoying notifications, so it's a simple way to get a more peaceful experience on Windows 11.

Stop automatic driver updates

Windows Update can't always be trusted

There are many ways to get driver updates on Windows 11, and Windows Update is one of them. Usually, it does a fine enough job, but there have been times where the drivers Windows Update suggests cause more troubles than they solve, and sometimes they're unskippable.

Winaero Tweaker has an option called Disable driver updates that helps prevent this exact issue.. If your Windows 11 PC keeps installing a driver that causes issues with one of your devices, enabling this feature will stop that from happening, and then you can install a driver from your OEM or the manufacturer of that specific device to get the optimal experience. It's not something most people should need, but it can be extremely helpful in some situations.

No more annoying ads

Quiet down, please

Windows 11 comes with a wide range of ways in which Microsoft tries to interrupt your experience. Calling all of these "ads" may be something of an exaggeration, but they're still forced interruptions that we're better off without. Most of these options can be disabled in various pages of the Windows Settings app, but they're spread out and can be harder to find.

In the Ads and Unwanted Apps section of Winaero Tweaker, you can disable a lot of these annoyances in one go. That includes Start menu suggestions, app and website promotions in the Recommended section of the Start menu, ads and promotions in Windows Spotlight, the Welcome Experience that can sometimes appear after installing an update, and more. It's nice to have one place for all these options, and it seems like there are even some future-proofing ones, such as disabling ads in File Explorer, which haven't materialized yet.

Disable telemetry

My data is mine

Windows telemetry data is collected by Microsoft to help the company learn more about potential issues in Windows and what needs to be done to fix them. By default, telemetry data is collected on every Windows PC, and while it can be disabled, it's not the easiest thing to do, since you need to go through the Services dialog, which is daunting in itself.

The Disable Telemetry page in Winaero Tweaker makes it that much easier to turn telemetry off altogether. Just check the box and restart your computer and you'll no longer be sending data to Microsoft.

There's a lot more

Winaero Tweaker is a very capable app that can change many more settings than just these, but most of them are also easily accessible in Windows itself, or they may be too small for most users to care. There's also a section of Winaero Tweaker that helps you download various classic Windows apps, including the games packed in with Windows 7, which is kind of interesting. If you're interested, it's worth spending some time exploring all the options available and tweaking things to your liking. You can download Winaero Tweaker below.