Chapter 3

Personalizing the Desktop and Taskbar

In This Chapter

arrow Putting shortcuts on the desktop — the advanced course

arrow Changing desktop colors and pictures

arrow Customizing the taskbar in unexpected, and useful, ways

It’s your desktop. Do with it what you will.

In Book III, Chapter 2, I talk about gussying up your Start menu — both the left side, with links, and the right side, with tiles. This chapter looks at the rest of your desktop, what you can do about it, and how you can grab Windows 10 by the throat and shake it up a bit. Player’s gotta play, play, play, play, and tweakers gotta tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak.

Shake it up.

With Windows 10’s tiles now basically replacing (and improving upon) Windows 7’s gadgets, there are fewer reasons to use the desktop now than ever before. Still, many installers put links for their own programs on the desktop, avoiding Start menu tiles like the plague, and you may have your own reasons for using Desktop shortcuts.

No matter what your bias, the taskbar remains an excellent place to put your most heavily used icons.

Decking out the Desktop

The Windows 10 desktop may look simple, but it isn’t. In Figure 3-1, for example, you can see the Start ...

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