Disclaimer

Last updated: 6 November 2026.

No affiliation

explorerpatcher.dev is an independent guide. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by:

• VALINET Solutions SRL, or Valentin-Gabriel Radu (valinet) or Amrsatrio or any other ExplorerPatcher developer or contributor in their role as developers of the program. We credit them on the about page because their work is the subject of our guides, not because they asked us to.
• Microsoft Corporation. Windows, Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Edge, WebView2, Smart App Control and other Microsoft names are used only to describe what we tested.

We do not speak for the project. Official information about ExplorerPatcher is on its GitHub repository, which its release notes name as the only official distribution channel.

Trademarks

“ExplorerPatcher” is the name of the program by its authors. We use it to describe the program, and we do not use the program’s icon or the developers’ names as our brand. “Windows”, “Microsoft”, “Windows Server”, “Defender”, “Edge” and related marks are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. StartAllBack, Windhawk, Open-Shell, Start11 (a Stardock product), RetroBar, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker, TranslucentTB, Winaero Tweaker, GitHub, Google and SentinelOne are names of their respective owners. All trademarks belong to their owners, and naming them here does not imply any relationship.

Use at your own risk

ExplorerPatcher modifies how Windows starts its desktop. By its authors’ own warnings, a Windows update can break it until a new release appears, it can conflict with security software, and they advise against using its taskbar on work or mission-critical PCs. Our guides, tools and test results describe it as we found it. If you follow them, you do so at your own risk. Back up first, know the recovery steps, and read the safety page.

No warranty

We provide this site as it is, with no warranty of any kind: not for accuracy, completeness, fitness for a purpose or that it is free of errors. The ExplorerPatcher licence (GPL-2.0) says the program itself comes without warranty as well. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for loss or damage that results from using this site or the software it describes.

Limits of our testing

We tested ExplorerPatcher 71.1 on three GitHub-hosted machines on 6 Nov 2026: Windows 11 Enterprise 25H2 on Arm64, Windows Server 2025 with the 24H2 shell and Windows Server 2022 with the Windows 10 shell. We did not test physical PCs, multiple monitors, Smart App Control turned on, third-party antivirus, Insider builds or most Windows editions. Where a page says “upstream”, the statement comes from the project’s own wiki, source or release notes, and we did not test it. See how we test.

Out-of-date information

Windows and ExplorerPatcher change often. Every page shows the version and date it was checked against. If you find something wrong, tell us through contact and see the corrections log.