Earlier in the month, we covered some unofficial, third-party Windows utilities that promise to make Windows better. These included tiny11 builder, which now supports ESD in addition to WIM, an updated Wintoys that has also gotten multiple improvements lately, and Winpilot Adblock that, as the name suggests, claims to block all annoying ads that have become a part of Windows 11.
There are also those who don't like the Search bar on Windows 11. Perhaps it is the way it looks or the ads there. If you are in that category and are looking for a small, lightweight app to hide the Search bar, you can do so using TranslucentSM, where the SM stands for Start Menu, and the initial idea behind the app was to enable tweaking the Windows 11 Start menu's opacity levels.
The latest version, 0.6.9, of the app rectified an issue such that the hide Search bar option now works on Windows 11 24H2 as well.
0.6.9
another bugfix release(bruh)
- hide search works on 24h2 now
- fix layout breaking when hide recommended + hide search (finally)
Aside from that, there has been a flurry of releases from the developer of the app. The Recommended section, which is like the main hub of a lot of the ads and promos, can also be hidden.
And the app works on Windows 10 as well. The changelogs for the recent releases are given below:
0.5
- edit button in windows 10 start menu
- uses UCRT instead of msvcrt
- dll is separate (no more false positives)
0.6
- hide recommended
- hide some white border idk see for yourself
- make the w10 start menu hamburger background transparent
0.6.5
bugfix release
- fixes layout breaking when hide search + hide recommended
- fixes crash on windows 10
If you find this utility interesting, you can download it from its official GitHub repository. Do keep in mind that this is a third-party app, and hence, you should, as always, proceed with a bit of caution.
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