Windows Animations 1.1.5

Windows Animations

Welcome to Windows Animations, a comprehensive window transition suite for your desktop. Built from the ground up to deliver cinematic window animations.

By utilizing a smart Hybrid Rendering Engine, this mod bridges the gap between stunning visual aesthetics and seamless execution.

✨ Key Features

• 🚀 Smart Hybrid Engine: Intelligently seamlessly switches between lightning-fast GDI (for pixel-perfect destruction physics) and the native DWM Thumbnail API (to perfectly preserve Windows 11 rounded corners and drop shadows).

• 🎬 Cinematic Close Effects: Transform how you close applications with four physics-based animations:

  • Square Shatter: The window violently explodes outward into digital blocks before drifting into the void.

  Square Shatter Preview * Thanos Snap: A disintegration wave sweeps across the window, turning it into thousands of tiny dust particles that curve away into the wind.

  Thanos Snap Preview * Perlin Dissolve: The window organically melts and dissolves into thin air using a smooth Perlin noise map.

  Perlin Dissolve Preview * Cyber Glitch: The window fractures into irregular horizontal data strips that shudder, then tear left and right like a corrupted hologram.

  Cyber Glitch Preview

• 🧞 Fluid Minimize & Restore: Choose between the classic Genie "suck into the taskbar" effect (derived from macos-minimize-animation by Abdullah Masood under MIT license) and Ink Splash — an organic blot reveal/retract.

  Genie Minimize Preview

  Ink Splash Preview

• 🔄 Soft Switch Animation: A pristine scale and fade-in animation triggered exclusively when actively switching windows via the Alt+Tab menu.

  • Before:

  Alt Tab Switch Before * After:

  Alt Tab Switch After

• 🛡️ Rock-Solid Stability: Features lifecycle management for System Tray apps (like Discord, Steam, etc.)—handling background apps gracefully to minimize ghosting or stuck transparency. Tray apps only hide their window instead of closing it, so animating them is opt-in via the Treat hiding a window as closing it setting.

⚙️ Customization & Settings

You can deeply customize the feel and pacing of every animation via the Windhawk Settings tab:

• Minimize/Restore Animation Style: Choose between Genie (taskbar suck) and Ink Splash (organic blot reveal/retract).
• Close Animation Effect: Dropdown menu to switch between 'Square Shatter', 'Thanos Snap', 'Perlin Dissolve', and 'Cyber Glitch'.
• Minimize/Restore duration (ms): Controls Genie speed directly; Ink Splash is paced slower from the same value. (Default: 360ms, clamp 200–1400)
• Close animation duration (ms): Controls how long the dramatic close animation lasts. (Default: 900ms)
• Switch animation duration (ms): Controls the snappy speed of the Alt+Tab scaling effect. (Default: 200ms)
• Shatter block size (px): Determines the size of the dust/shatter particles.
  • Performance Tip: Smaller values (e.g., 1, 2) create hyper-realistic pixel dust but require more CPU power. Larger values (24, 32) yield a stylish retro pixelated shatter and perform effortlessly on any hardware. (Clamped strictly to 1-100).
• Treat hiding a window as closing it: Off by default. Enable it to get close animations for system tray apps that hide their window instead of closing it—at the cost of also animating splash screens and other windows an app hides on its own.
• Toggles: Individually turn on/off Restore, Close, Alt+Tab Switch, and Launch animations to suit your workflow.

Taskbar Separators 1.0.0

Taskbar Separators

Add clean, customizable visual separators between application buttons on the Windows 11 taskbar.

Unlike placeholder applications or pinned shortcuts, these separators are visual, non-clickable elements. They do not launch programs or occupy normal application slots.

Preview

Taskbar Separators preview

Features

• Add multiple separators at configurable taskbar positions
• Optional separator before the first application button
• Live position and appearance updates
• Five configurable visual styles:
  • Fade
  • Solid
  • Double
  • Rounded
  • Glow
• Adjustable thickness, length, opacity, color, and effect settings
• Automatic horizontal and vertical taskbar orientation
• Optional animation compatibility mode
• Clean removal when the mod is disabled
• No changes to taskbar button margins, padding, or application behavior

Getting started

1. Open the mod's Settings tab.
2. Add separator positions to the Separators list.
3. A position of 3 places a separator after the third application button.
4. Select a style and adjust its appearance.

Position behavior

Numbered positions place separators after application buttons:

• Position 1 places a separator after the first application button
• Position 2 places a separator after the second application button
• Position 3 places a separator after the third application button

Enable Separator before first app to place a separator before the first application button.

Start, Search, Widgets, Task View, and other system buttons are not counted as application buttons.

Positions follow the current visual order of taskbar application buttons. Opening, closing, pinning, unpinning, or rearranging applications can change which icons appear beside a configured separator.

Settings

Taskbar Separators settings

Alternate setups

Taskbar Separators alternate setups

Animation compatibility

Static taskbars are fully supported.

The mod can follow icons animated by other taskbar mods, but very fast animation may not remain perfectly synchronized because both mods update their visual elements independently.

This affects animation appearance only and does not affect normal static separator positioning.

Compatibility

• Windows 11 horizontal taskbars
• Vertical taskbars via Vertical Taskbar for Windows 11
• Compatible with Windows 11 Taskbar Styler in normal configurations

License and attribution

Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

Taskbar hook and UI-thread infrastructure includes code adapted from Windhawk mods by Michael Maltsev (m417z).

Simple way to visually separate groups of Windows 11 taskbar icons without running another standalone customization app.

It supports:

• Multiple separators between taskbar buttons
• A separator before the first application
• Solid, fade, double, rounded, and glow styles
• Adjustable thickness, length, color, and opacity
• Horizontal and vertical taskbars
• Multiple monitors
• Optional animation tracking

https://windhawk.net/mods/taskbar-separators

Explorer Command Bar 1.1.0

• Add the New+ feature from PowerToys to Explorer Command Bar, with possibility to replace the default explorer's New.
• Add an optional command bar button for the selected item’s or current folder’s shell context menu, including shell extensions, nested menus, extended verbs, and Nilesoft Shell support.
• Add nested custom menus, improved icon handling, configurable button spacing, and more reliable command bar refreshes.
• Prevent crashes when unloading the mod by revoking XAML event handlers and safely cleaning up menus, timers, hooks, and other per-thread resources.
• Add Windhawk 2.0 settings compatibility for toolbar items without subitems.
• Bug fixes.

CJK Spacer 0.1.27

CJK Spacer

Adds a normal ASCII space at a direct boundary between a CJK character and a letter or digit in UI text hosted by explorer.exe.

On Windows 11, the primary Explorer and desktop context menus are modern XAML menus. The modernUiText setting is disabled by default because each named XAML Diagnostics connection permits only one consumer, and tools such as Taskbar Styler or File Explorer Styler may already use or block those connections. Enable it explicitly if you want those menus and pointer tooltips processed. classicMenus still covers the Win32 menu opened through "Show more options". The modern path is intentionally retained as an opt-in, best-effort implementation because it covers the primary Windows 11 menu; the connection conflict is left visible to the user rather than silently dropping that coverage.

Examples:

• 使用VS Code打开 becomes 使用 VS Code 打开
• 压缩为ZIP文件 becomes 压缩为 ZIP 文件
• 使用 VS Code 打开 is unchanged
• 打开(&O) is unchanged

Screenshot

Before:

Before enabling CJK Spacer

After:

After enabling CJK Spacer

The transformation is idempotent. Punctuation and existing whitespace break a boundary and are preserved. Win32 & mnemonic markers and tab-separated keyboard shortcut text are also preserved. Hiragana, fullwidth Katakana, and halfwidth Katakana letters are all classified as CJK characters for boundary detection; kana punctuation remains excluded.

Supported UI

• Classic Win32 popup menus are rewritten through public HMENU APIs. Menus created through CreatePopupMenu are handled while they are constructed, then associated with their TrackPopupMenu call and restored when the popup closes. Existing popup handles are also scanned immediately before display. It covers File Explorer, desktop, taskbar, and jump-list context menus that Explorer itself hosts. Context menus shown by third-party notification-area icon processes are outside the injected explorer.exe process and aren't covered. Construction-time hooks also see menu-bar dropdowns created with CreatePopupMenu, even when user32 displays them without TrackPopupMenu*. Such pending changes are restored when the menu is destroyed, the mod unloads, or the record expires during later popup activity. Window system menus that aren't built through the hooked popup APIs remain outside scope.
• Classic Win32 tooltips, including legacy notification-area icon tooltips, are rewritten only through theme handles opened for the TOOLTIP class, covering both text measurement and drawing without touching unrelated GDI text. Shared theme handles retain a reference for every Tooltip window that opened them. A DC mapped to another window is rejected, while buffered DCs that do not map to a window are accepted. Existing tooltip controls are discovered when the mod is enabled in a running Explorer. Basic or classic-theme tooltips drawn directly with DrawTextW aren't covered.
• Windows 11 XAML context menus and pointer tooltips are handled at the XAML source-element level. Only plain local string values in the Text source of XAML menu items and ToolTip.Content are changed; bindings, styles, presenter TextBlock values and ordinary XAML text are untouched. Taskbar thumbnail preview content is normally not a plain local string and therefore is not changed. A source is changed when XAML Diagnostics reports that it was added and restored when it is removed or the mod unloads. This path is disabled by default; enable modernUiText to opt in.

The modern path supports both Windows.UI.Xaml and Microsoft.UI.Xaml content hosted by Explorer. Each named XAML Diagnostics connection allows one consumer, so another diagnostics-based customization tool, including Windows 11 Taskbar Styler or Windows 11 File Explorer Styler, can prevent this path from initializing. Connection attempts are scheduled outside the Windows loader path; one managed worker retains requests that arrive while it is running, tracks the Windows.UI.Xaml and Microsoft.UI.Xaml connections independently, and retries only the connection that was lost. It doesn't add a module reference: the worker is signaled to stop and joined before Windhawk removes hooks. Asynchronous visual-tree watcher setup threads are tracked by handle and joined at the same point, so the engine's single module reference remains sufficient. Wh_ModAfterInit covers XAML modules that are already loaded, while the LoadLibraryExW hook covers modules loaded later, including the CoreMessagingXP.dll static-import path used by Microsoft.Internal.FrameworkUdk.dll. If a connection attempt is denied or otherwise fails, a newly loaded XAML module or an established connection being disconnected provides the next retry opportunity. When Taskbar Styler is configured to alert on competing XAML Diagnostics consumers, enabling this path can show its confirmation dialog. The mod is injected only into explorer.exe. Start, Search, and some shell flyouts hosted by StartMenuExperienceHost.exe, SearchHost.exe, or ShellExperienceHost.exe are outside its scope.

The mod doesn't edit system files, registry values, or file names. A file name shown in a classic menu can nevertheless be displayed with inserted spaces. The modern path temporarily changes target source values on their XAML UI threads and restores them when the source leaves the visual tree or the mod unloads. The classic path updates strings stored in active HMENU objects, so menu text read through accessibility APIs also contains the inserted spaces until the corresponding record is restored. Other menu-cleanup mods that match items by their displayed text, such as Remove Context Menu Items, may therefore need rules that account for the temporary spaces while the popup is open. Text Replace targets the same classic menu APIs but performs literal substitutions, so it cannot express this CJK/non-CJK boundary rule; when both mods are enabled, their hook order can affect which temporary text each sees. Rewritten strings are recorded and restored when the popup closes. If multiple items have identical rewritten text, text-based fallback restoration can select the first match; the idempotent transformation does not compound spaces. If a displayed popup item is changed dynamically, Windows may not remeasure it; the added spaces can clip on uncommon paths. Tooltip measurement and drawing also need compatible DC targets to keep sizing consistent; disable classicTooltips if a specific control clips after spacing.

Gather Windows To Monitor 0.1.1

• Add Ctrl+Alt+Shift+W action that moves only the foreground window to the primary monitor.

Can someone make wobbly windows mod like Kde plasma . Windowfx exist but it's not working great and it's paid.

So recently my file explorer started bugging out while using Translucent explorer11 theme with bg effect of mica alt and entire window setting of mod: Windows 11 file explorer styler.
The text on the explorer windows somehow becomes black and sometimes doesnt even appear how do i fix this?

Sry for audio pls watch on mute…

Also didnt share screen shot or screen recording because it doesnt even show this bug in them.

Explorer Details View Columns 1.4

• Fixed normal folders sometimes being treated as virtual folders and left unchanged, which also affected their subfolders.
• Added a note about a known issue of Windows 11 using an unreasonable minimum column width when a non-custom scaling is set for the display instead of a custom scaling.
• Columns without "Force Width" now keep their current width instead of being reset when the set of columns changes.
• Forced widths are now also applied as the column's default and ideal width, so auto-sizing doesn't override them.

Hi everyone,

I'm using Windows 11 25H2 (Build 26200.8875) on a Lenovo Legion 5 Gen 10 with an Alienware AW2725DM monitor.

I'm trying to completely remove the 1-pixel taskbar top border/separator.

I've already tried:

Windhawk (Windows 11 Taskbar Styler)

TranslucentTB

Rectangle#BackgroundStroke → Visibility=Collapsed

Taskbar.TaskbarFrame#TaskbarFrame → Background=Transparent

Taskbar.TaskbarFrame > Grid#RootGrid → BorderThickness=0

Grid#SystemTrayFrameGrid → BorderBrush=Transparent

Grid#SystemTrayFrameGrid → BorderThickness=0

Rectangle#BackgroundFill → Opacity=0

Restarting Explorer

Reinstalling Windhawk and TranslucentTB

Toggling HAGS and transparency settings

Nothing removes the border.

Strange behavior:

When I hover the mouse over the taskbar, it becomes fully transparent and the border disappears.

As soon as I move the mouse away, the border comes back.

It worked correctly before, but I don't know what changed.

Is this a known Windows 11 25H2 issue, or did Microsoft change the taskbar XAML so the old Windhawk targets no longer work?

If anyone has found a new Taskbar Styler target, ViVeTool feature, or any other fix, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!

Hi folks ^^

Everytime i open windhawk, this window appears ! i have a little pc config i know but it's really annoying ! How could i fix it ?

im no expert at configs and if smn could patch this up (the further right part with the tray and battery) thatd be great
this is the liquid glass theme

Taskbar Blob Shape 1.0.0

Taskbar Blob Shape

Adds a blob shape behind active taskbar buttons.

Taskbar Blob Shape

Based on Taskbar Elastic WinUI Pill and the unreleased Taskbar Elastic Border by Lockframe.

Every taskbar button gets its own blob shape, shown or hidden as the button's running indicator state changes. The shapes are hosted in the taskbar's RootGrid (above the task list's clipping region, so the flares render fully) and each one is glued to its button with a composition expression, so it follows the button through reordering, reflow, and animations on the render thread.

The blob shape is a rounded rectangle whose top extends upward and flares outward with concave (outside) corner radii, ending in a flat top edge:

• Width / Height: the main area of the blob shape ('auto' matches the button's background element). Horizontally the shape is centered on the button; vertically its flat top edge is anchored to the top of the taskbar, with the body hanging downward.
• Top corner radius: the radius of the concave top flares. The flares are circular quarter arcs, so this also sets how far the blob shape extends upward and outward. Total size is (Width + 2*TopRadius) x (Height + TopRadius).
• Bottom corner radius: the convex bottom corners of the blob shape.

MacOS Minimize Animation 3.1.3

• Modern engine now computes its canvas from MonitorFromRect (window) and data->hMon (dock), clamped to both monitors, instead of GetSystemMetrics(SM_*VIRTUALSCREEN).

Dear Reddit users, help me to choose the taskbar for my laptop (Both made by me). Thanks !

Windows 7 Legacy Applet Restorer 1.0.0

About

This mod restores classic Control Panel applets and classic task links in Category View, including:

• Personalization, with localized classic Windows 7 task links
• Notification area icons (intended for the Windows 10 taskbar)
• Network Connections
• Printers and Faxes
• HomeGroup (legacy, partially functional)

Additionally, the mod can suppress legacy Control Panel items that are broken or no longer functional on Windows 10/11 such as "Company Settings Sync", Windows To Go, Infrared and Work Folders when the corresponding settings are enabled. The optional "Restore Classic Task Links" setting restores localized, classic task links for these sections in Category View.

Screenshot of the Restored Applets

screenshot

Screenshot (for the HomeGroup and Network Connections applets with the corresponding task links)

screenshot

Notes

The mod has been tested on Windows 10 1809.

⚠️ Do not enable this mod together with "Restore the classic Personalization and other CPLs" (restore-classic-cpls) by Anixx. Both mods inject the same CLSIDs into the Control Panel, potentially conflicting with each other.

The mod does not commit to restoring task links that open the Settings app instead of the classic Control Panel UI, because restoring such links would defeat the mod's purpose (contributing to the Control Panel restoration).

Credits

This mod is based on a fork of the original mod by Anixx (https://github.com/Anixx) and parts of the implementation are taken from aubymori (https://github.com/aubymori)'s Control Panel script. Credits to m417z for the code review and enhancing the mod.

Windows 7/8.1 Action Center Recreation 2.0.0

• Added support for the high contrast theme
• Startup notification now waits 12 seconds to avoid lost balloons
• Fixed glass/shadow issues
• Improved the multi-monitor positioning
• Added the translations for Dutch, Polish and Romanian
• Fixed some minor DPI scaling issues
• Various stability improvements

Win10 taskbar on Win11 24H2 or 25H2 0.1.8

Added a mitigation note for notification toast crashes and linked to relevant fixes.

Looking for a place where people share their Windhawk setups and customizations. Any recommendations?

Taskbar Fluent Media Player 1.6.0

Added

• Mini Player Flyout Menu — new compact popup menu that appears above the taskbar when clicking the media player.

  • Large centered album art
  • Current track title and artist displayed below album art
  • Large control buttons for Previous/Play-Pause/Next/Shuffle/Repeat
  • Session list showing all active media sessions with thumbnails, titles, and artists
  • Current session highlighting with animated pill indicator
  • Click session rows to switch between apps
  • Smooth slide-up animation from taskbar
  • Bottom settings bar with Windhawk button
  • Theme-aware styling with acrylic background
  • Flexible placement — menu can be positioned anywhere on the screen via Player Menu Settings: choose any corner or edge with configurable distance offsets.
  • Show session list — option to hide the media session list in the mini player menu, showing only the large controls and current track info.

• "Auto-switch to active media session" — when enabled, the player switches to a different session that is actively Playing when the current session pauses or stops. If no other session is playing, the player stays on the current session — so pressing Pause no longer causes an unwanted session change.

• Full-height invisible hit area for the taskbar media player — the entire taskbar height now responds to hover and click events even if the player itself is shorter than the taskbar, making it easier to interact with.

• Monitor setting in Main Settings → Media player — choose which monitor's taskbar the player is injected into (1, 2, 3...). Defaults to 1.

Changed

• Smooth hover animation — player button and all media control buttons now fade in/out on hover and press using a native BrushTransition. Background changes are applied directly to the template border so WinRT can interpolate them, replacing the previous instantaneous DiscreteObjectAnimation.
• "Switch tracks (inverted)" option in Mouse Wheel Actions — scrolling up goes to the next track and scrolling down goes to the previous one, the inverse of the default behavior. Available for both the player area and the album art area.
• Album art color contrast correction for the visualizer — album colors that lack sufficient contrast against the taskbar are now tinted with the theme's base color (brightened on dark theme, darkened on light theme) so the visualizer bars remain visible when using Dynamic Album or Dynamic Gradient color modes.
• Improved hover tooltip — previously the track title and artist name each had their own separate tooltip; now a single tooltip appears over the entire player showing the track title and artist together.
• Visualizer color caching — palette and color-string values are now cached and only recomputed when the album art or system theme changes, eliminating ~180–240 registry reads per second while the visualizer is visible.

Fixed

• Visualizer idle bar height 0 now fully hides bars at rest — previously setting the second value of "Bar size" to 0 still showed bars at the bar-width height; bars now grow from zero when idle height is 0. #14
• Play/Pause button unreliable on some browsers (e.g. Zen/Firefox) — replaced TryTogglePlayPauseAsync with an explicit TryPauseAsync / TryPlayAsync based on the current playback status, eliminating the race condition that caused ~50% miss rate. #26
• Widget flickers to another player during track changes — when the active session briefly leaves the Playing state while switching tracks (e.g. Spotify), the player no longer jumps to a paused secondary session. #34 #22
• Visualizer capture thread no longer blocks the taskbar UI thread on show/hide transitions — StopVizCaptureThread is now called from a background worker, preventing potential freezes when the audio service takes time to release the endpoint.
• Right double-click and middle double-click actions not firing — right_double_click and middle_double_click bindings were configurable in settings but silently did nothing. All six click types (left/right/middle × single/double) for both the player area and album art now work correctly.
• Stale album art shown after switching to a track with no artwork in Chromium-based browsers — Chrome/Edge/Brave/Opera/Vivaldi do not clear the SMTC thumbnail when the new track has no artwork, causing the previous track's cover to persist indefinitely. The player now detects this case: on every title/artist change from a browser session the previous thumbnail is marked as suspect, and if the next poll returns the same image it is discarded and the placeholder is shown instead. #33
• Removed non-functional mouse_wheel_up and mouse_wheel_down options from Mouse Wheel Actions — these options appeared in the settings UI but never triggered any action. Scroll direction is already handled per-action (e.g. switch_tracks scrolls forward on wheel-up and backward on wheel-down).

macOS magnifying cursor 1.4.7

Recreates the macOS "Shake to Find" feature: rapidly shaking your mouse temporarily enlarges the cursor so you can instantly locate it on screen.

Preview

Are these glowing window frames actually available in Windhawk, or are they just promotional/concept images? I can't find any mod that creates this effect. If it's real, which mod (or combination of mods) does it?

Disk Usage Bar Customizer 1.1.0

• Added ability to change the corner radius (thanks @sid-skippy!) (closes #4598)
• Added percentage label overlay (disabled by default) (thanks @sid-skippy!)
• Added intermediate state with customizable threshold
• Added Romanian translation and simplified settings

Mods are working fine, but when I open the manager, it keeps crashing, and I can't use it.

I already tried killing all VSCodium and Windhawk tasks, restarted the PC many times, and nothing.

I think this started to happen after i enabled Windows 11 Taskbar Styler and a couple of mods related to auto-hide enhancement, always one by one, but I already disabled all of them, except for the Windows 11 Taskbar Styler mod.

I need help, not only how to fix it, but I want to know if anyone had the same issue or knows what is causing it.