How to get the Windows 10 taskbar on Windows 11

Drag the handle to compare. The notification in the corner is ExplorerPatcher’s own update message. Both pictures come from Windows Server 2025, which uses the Windows 11 24H2 shell.

What Windows 11 offers natively

We photographed Settings, Personalization, Taskbar before installing anything.

• Windows Server 2025 (24H2 shell, build 26100.33674). The page lists Taskbar items (Search, Task view), System tray icons and Taskbar behaviors. Inside Taskbar behaviors we saw Combine taskbar buttons and hide labels and Show smaller taskbar buttons, plus options for badges, flashing, multiple displays and showing the desktop corner.
• Windows 11 Enterprise 25H2 (build 26200.9725, Arm64). The page lists Search, Task view, Widgets, Resume, three tray options and Taskbar behaviors. The Taskbar behaviors section stayed collapsed in our photos, so we cannot say what was inside on this build.

The Taskbar behaviors description reads “Taskbar alignment, badging, automatically hide, and multiple displays”. It names no screen position, and we saw none in the rows we photographed. What Windows cannot give you is the Windows 10 look: the flag Start button, the wide labelled buttons with a search box, or a taskbar on the left or right. See never combine and labels, small taskbar and moving the taskbar for each native option in detail.

The three taskbar styles in ExplorerPatcher

The setting is Taskbar style in Properties, Taskbar. It has three choices, and most other taskbar settings depend on it. After you install, the default is the third one.

We measured the same numbers on Windows Server 2025 and on Windows 11 25H2 Arm64, on a 1600 by 900 screen at 100 % scaling. On Windows Server 2022, which has the real Windows 10 shell, all three choices gave the stock 40 px Windows 10 taskbar.

Upstream’s FAQ says the same: in 24H2 Microsoft removed the Windows 10 taskbar, so ExplorerPatcher ships its own implementation. Our compatibility table lists which Windows builds each taskbar file supports, and Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 have the details for those versions. If the taskbar stays the Windows 11 one after installing, read taskbar not changing.

Step by step

1. Prepare. Use a personal PC. Read Install ExplorerPatcher and the black screen guide. Turn Smart App Control off first, as upstream’s release notes tell you to.
2. Download from GitHub only. Use the download page to pick the right file and check its hash.
3. Run the setup. It took 5.2 to 8.6 seconds on our machines, and the taskbar changed at the same moment.
4. Open Properties. Right-click the taskbar and choose Properties. If it is missing, search Start for Properties (ExplorerPatcher).
5. Set the style. In Taskbar, set Taskbar style to Windows 10 (ExplorerPatcher). The asterisk after the name means the change needs a File Explorer restart.
6. Restart File Explorer. Click Restart File Explorer (*) at the bottom of the window.

Make it look like Windows 10

These settings sit in the same Taskbar section. Names are exactly as the app shows them, and each links to its entry in our taskbar settings list.

How we tested these: we set each value in the registry, where the Properties window stores it, restarted Explorer and took a screenshot. We did not click through the Properties window for each one.

For the whole look, including the Start menu, File Explorer and right-click menu, follow make Windows 11 look like Windows 10.

What is different from the real Windows 10 taskbar

From upstream’s wiki:

• It is a re-creation, “mostly based on the code present in Windows 11 22H2”, so it does not cover every feature of the original. Upstream names Assigned Access as missing.
• A Windows update can break it until a fix is released. Upstream tells you to switch back to the default taskbar if it becomes a nuisance.
• Other taskbar tweakers are not guaranteed to work. TranslucentTB, T-Clock Redux and TaskbarX are listed as compatible. 7+ Taskbar Tweaker is listed as incompatible.
• Perks that the real Windows 10 taskbar did not have: Snap Groups, a virtual desktop switcher when docked at the bottom, the Windows 11 animated Start, Search and Task View icons, and End Task.

From our own observations on 71.1:

• It is 40 px high on a 1600 by 900 screen. We did not measure it against a real Windows 10 install.
• The Windows 10 Start menu opens in the middle of the screen, as the Windows 11 one does, unless you change its position setting. See the Start menu page.
• Explorer restarts took 2 to 3.7 seconds in our measurements, with or without ExplorerPatcher.

Known problems reported upstream (we have not tried to reproduce them): issue 5130, open, is titled “The Windows 10-style taskbar is not available on Windows Server 2025”, although the style worked on our Server 2025 image. Issues 5209 and 5221 report Explorer crashes in Windows 11 Beta builds 26220.9757 and 26220.9836. The 71.1 release notes say the taskbar now checks that it is compatible with the running Windows version and falls back to the stock taskbar instead of crashing. Read each issue on GitHub before you rely on it.

Other ways

We have not tested these on our machines yet. Compare them on ExplorerPatcher vs StartAllBack, ExplorerPatcher vs Windhawk and the alternatives chooser.