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Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

windhawk.net

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Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#21

Post by sudopsuedo »

Krssst wrote: post #8
mattferderer wrote: post #5

Can't speak for this product but disabling a lot of the animations, gradients, shadows & visual effects has made Windows 11 run significantly better on the computers I have it on. They didn't seem to add much value anyways. I'm a fan of a lot of the user experience improvements being made in Windows over the last decade, such as Terminal, running Linux, Power Toys features, screenshots & recording, Paint finally gett…

Disabling animations makes everything better no matter the OS. When executing a sequence of actions, not having to wait 100-300ms for the device to show some random animation before inputing the next action is a time saver and a removes the "why is my computer/phone wasting my time" feeling. Human reaction time is around 200ms but in a sequence of actions, we don't need visual feedback to move to the next action; it'…

Have you looked into SimpleWindowSwitcher? https://github.com/sigoden/window-switcher

ExplorerPatcher makes it easy to configure in the settings menu, I'm not aware of any other projects that implement SWS: https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher

It's very fast and can be configured to set window thumbnail size/area

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#22

Post by m417z »

Hi, Windhawk author here. Nice to see it on Hacker News.

This is just one Windhawk mod, submitted by a community member. There are hundreds others. Windhawk was created to simplify Windows customization and to make it more accessible, both for developers and users. For a more detailed introduction, check out the Windhawk release blog post:

https://ramensoftware.com/windhawk

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#23

Post by m417z »

zerr wrote: post #17
vunderba wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my first concern too, but it does look like you can build the binary from source: https://github.com/ramensoftware/windhawk

Why such a simple UI utility app needed a VSCodium/Electron UI? The author seems to be well versed in Win32 API, so why not just learn the GUI part as well? It's not that hard.

The reason the Windhawk UI is based on VSCodium is mainly for the mod editing functionality. VSCodium with clangd are used for C++ intellisense out of the box.

You might say that many users don't care about mod development and don't need it. I agree, and I have it on my list to create a lite Windhawk version which doesn't depend on VSCodium.

Note that VSCodium is only used for the UI. When Windhawk is running in the background, its memory consumption is a couple of MB.

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#24

Post by keyringlight »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #16

I used to use Stardock WindowBlinds to do something similar, but it leads to all sorts of weird compatibility issues with various applications. I wonder if this will have the same issues?

I find the various privacy and 'feature' disabling scripts/utilities questionable for a similar reason, it's moving outside of the expected behavior of the OS for how applications and future MS updates expect things to work. The core issue seems to be you're working against what MS want and they provide a moving target, functionally it's their system, not yours.

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#26

Post by ComputerGuru »

Krssst wrote: post #8
mattferderer wrote: post #5

Can't speak for this product but disabling a lot of the animations, gradients, shadows & visual effects has made Windows 11 run significantly better on the computers I have it on. They didn't seem to add much value anyways. I'm a fan of a lot of the user experience improvements being made in Windows over the last decade, such as Terminal, running Linux, Power Toys features, screenshots & recording, Paint finally gett…

Disabling animations makes everything better no matter the OS. When executing a sequence of actions, not having to wait 100-300ms for the device to show some random animation before inputing the next action is a time saver and a removes the "why is my computer/phone wasting my time" feeling. Human reaction time is around 200ms but in a sequence of actions, we don't need visual feedback to move to the next action; it'…

Not exactly alt-tab but it’s a ui-less immediate switcher (snappy af, zero latency) to switch between windows of the same app with alt-backtick (next to escape), originally a macOS feature: https://neosmart.net/EasySwitch/

(Backwards navigation with alt-shift-backtick)

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#27

Post by sockaddr »

oybng wrote: post #25

It's incredible the effort Windows 10/11 users will go to in order to reach a somewhat functional and reliable computing experience via third party modifications, yet Linux is somehow too much effort. Just look at the instructions on that page..

"but he's sweet sometimes"

It's just an abusive relationship and eventually some of them break out of it.

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#28

Post by gruez »

Veliladon wrote: post #6

> The mod injects only in the process Winlogon.exe, and exits once the handle of the memory area is closed. It does not hook any functions. Yep. Sure. Going to let a Russian utility fuck with winlogon.exe. Excellent idea.

>fuck with winlogon.exe. Excellent idea.

That's mostly irrelevant because all the thing baddies want to do with your computer, they can do without touching winlogon or even getting admin.

https://xkcd.com/1200/

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#29

Post by Krssst »

sudopsuedo wrote: post #21
Krssst wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disabling animations makes everything better no matter the OS. When executing a sequence of actions, not having to wait 100-300ms for the device to show some random animation before inputing the next action is a time saver and a removes the "why is my computer/phone wasting my time" feeling. Human reaction time is around 200ms but in a sequence of actions, we don't need visual feedback to move to the next action; it'…

Have you looked into SimpleWindowSwitcher? https://github.com/sigoden/window-switcher ExplorerPatcher makes it easy to configure in the settings menu, I'm not aware of any other projects that implement SWS: https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher It's very fast and can be configured to set window thumbnail size/area

Thank you, I was not aware of either of those.

SimpleWindowSwitcher looks like a good alternative, unfortunately on my side I think I would prefer switching between all windows of all apps rather than have two different shortcuts for "switch between windows of the current app" and "switch between apps" (but that's just a personal preference).

ExplorerPatcher looks cool too, though patching explorer is probably a no-no in corporate setups.

I also saw https://github.com/kvakulo/Switcheroo which I was curious to try (although it's not an exact replacement either) but never got to it (also seems quite old).

Re: Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11

#30

Post by rikafurude21 »

m417z wrote: post #22

Hi, Windhawk author here. Nice to see it on Hacker News. This is just one Windhawk mod, submitted by a community member. There are hundreds others. Windhawk was created to simplify Windows customization and to make it more accessible, both for developers and users. For a more detailed introduction, check out the Windhawk release blog post: https://ramensoftware.com/windhawk

I've come across Windhawk before but the mods being just C++ programs seemed a little suspicious to me, how do you make sure the mods dont include malware?
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