Not too long ago, I wrote about how I wish Microsoft would borrow the idea of desktop environments from Linux and use it for Windows 11. Desktop environments allow for radically different user experiences, providing a level of customization that Windows users can only dream of. In that article, I did acknowledge that some attempts at this do exist on Windows, with one major example being Seelen UI.

Now, I've written about Seelen UI before, but that was almost a year ago, shortly after the project had just made its debut. Things have evolved a lot since that initial release, and I wanted to go back and see how good an experience it can provide now, and whether there's true hope for a proper desktop replacement on Windows.

As it turns out, Seelen is pretty great now. Don't get me wrong, it's not a perfect experience, but it does an excellent job at showing the potential of something like this.

A (nearly) full desktop UI

Seelen UI can almost make you forget you're using Windows

Right off the bat, Seelen UI goes above and beyond to provide a desktop experience that truly feels fresh and distinct from the typical Windows experience. Now that I've actually used Linux, I'd describe it as being the closest to something like GNOME on Linux. There's a toolbar along the top of the screen, which by default includes a user menu and an indicator of the currently running app (which I personally found useless) on the left side of the screen, a date and time widget in the center, and various system icons like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on the right side of the screen.

What I find really impressive about this is that Seelen also includes custom-made flyouts and menus. It has its own Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connection pane, a power menu with a brightness slider and other actions, even a volume flyout that can control various audio devices and includes currently playing media, so you have universal controls even if you're looking at a different app.

Best of all, the user menu I mentioned before actually contains some useful links. It has menus for your recent items, as well as the major user folders like Documents and Pictures, so you can quickly access your files from here. It can even open your user folder or OneDrive folder, too, it's all pretty neat.

Of course, there's also a dock at the bottom of the screen, showing the Start button along with your open apps, and a media player module that's included by default but I personally found unnecessary. Sadly, the Start menu is still just the basic Windows 11 one, but according to the GitHub page, the developer has designed a new app launcher for Seelen, which is inspired by Rofi on Linux. Hopefully that means a proper replacement for the Start menu is also coming soon; it would be great to have a completely unified experience.

Customization galore

Seelen has a whole extension platform now

I'm not sure if Seelen has just evolved a ton or if I was completely clueless last time I tried it, but one of the coolest things about using it today is the incredible range of customization you can get with it. Out of the box, you already have some basic options like removing modules from the toolbar or dock, or moving the dock to a different side of the screen. But now, Seelen comes with a full extensibility platform, with plugins, themes, and more available on the web.

These plugins and themes can radically change how Seelen looks depending on what you install. Even now, the selection is obviously not as big as it could be, but there are dedicated sections here for things like sound packs and icons that could easily take this to a whole other level.

As it stands, most of the add-ons (called resources) available revolve around theming or adding certain functionality. For instance, I added a weather module to my toolbar, so now I can see a summary of weather information at my current location at all times. Windows also does this, but it feels like a better implementation here in terms of design.

Then there's a wide range of theming options, too. One I had to try was Immersive Toolbar, which just makes the toolbar mostly transparent with floating modules that are also semi-transparent. It looks a lot nicer than the default, in my opinion. I then also installed Colorful Toolbar, which let me change the text color for said modules, so I made them blue instead of white. The dock also gets a lot of love from themes. Some add a wave-like animation similar to the macOS dock (albeit nowhere near as smooth), and others can customize its appearance in preset ways, such as mimicking the Liquid Glass design from Apple. But perhaps the most impressive is the aptly named Fully Customizable Dock resource, which lets you change everything about how the dock looks. You can change the color and transparency of just about every element of the dock, along with changing sizes for certain elements, too. As far as freedom goes, this one is great.

I haven't even really scratched the surface of what's available here, but the potential is immense.

There's a productivity angle, too

Launching apps and organizing windows

Seelen may offer impressive customization and a different look overall, but there's more to it than just visuals. It also tries to improve your productivity with a couple of interesting features. First, there's a built-in search bar that replaces Windows search, and it's pretty cool. It's essentially the same premise as something like Flow Launcher, though there's a big flaw in execution here. Unlike those other launcher apps, the search bar doesn't automatically highlight the first result, so just pressing Enter after searching for something won't work. This adds a bit of a delay to the workflow, but it seems like it would be an easy fix.

The other big addition in Seelen UI is a tiling window manager, and it's a fairly clever idea. When enabled, the window manager will automatically tile your open apps next to each other in what it considers an optimal layout. You can choose from a set of layouts available to use something that works better for your needs, though it would be great if it was easier to create custom layouts, too. I imagine something like that would be possible, so hopefully it's coming in the future.

I did have an issue where the window manager was initially snapping my apps into tiny areas and making them unusable, but that seemed to go away eventually and then it worked fine.

It's web-based

But performance could be better

What I still find the most fascinating about Seelen UI is that it relies on web technologies and requires the WebView implementation in Windows to be installed in order to work. I'm still just as astounded at what's possible with WebView as I was when I first tried Seelen. Replacing the entire Windows desktop experience, adding a dock and a toolbar, a search bar, and a tiling window manager all make this incredibly impressive considering Microsoft really isn't interested in supporting this kind of application.

Maybe because it does rely on web technologies, and because there are probably a lot of workarounds required to get everything working, I have noticed some slight hiccups in the experience. For example, when hovering over an icon on the dock, it will attempt to show a preview of the app windows that are open, but it can take a couple of seconds for the preview to load, which feels a little sluggish. The tiling window manager also takes a second to force an app into the tile layout, though it's not enough to really hurt the experience.

Really, this just shows the potential of what could be done if Windows 11 were a bit more open as a platform so that developers could build solutions like this with technologies that feel more native to Windows and have better performance. It's impressive that this can be achieved as it is.

Seelen UI has a promising future

In less than a year, Seelen UI has already evolved tremendously, and while it's not the perfect desktop experience, it's a great way to make your PC look and feel more unique, while also providing some potential productivity enhancements with the tiling window manager and app launcher. I'm very curious to see how it continues to evolve over time and becomes even more customizable and useful. Maybe I can even re-revisit it again for another article in another year or so. For now, you can check it out for yourself below.