Unofficial apps may be your best bet as Microsoft to remove more Windows 10 elements from 11

Microsoft released a new Windows 11 Insider build for the Canary channel users this week. The new build, 25921, brings new bug fixes and improvements.

Alongside the ones announced, Microsoft often introduces new features that are not a part of the changelog. These unannounced features are hidden gems meant for enthusiasts to figure out and dig up. Sometimes, some of these features are not enabled as they are meant for future releases, or perhaps Microsoft itself isn't sure about the change yet and is still trying to figure out its quirks and iron out the bugs. One such feature that (also) surfaced on the Dev channel recently is the option to repair or recover a broken Windows 11 install via the Windows Update.

Likewise, the latest Canary build has several tweaks done to the File Explorer. Twitter user and Windows detective Xeno found that Explorer.exe (File Explorer app) has several portions of the old Windows 10 taskbar removed when the Material UI (explorer.exe.mui) strings of the new build 25921 were observed. Deskmodder (German) notes that the size of this file has been reduced to 12Kb from 17Kb in build 22621.

Another Windows enthusiast PhantomOcean3 found that they were unable to open the notification area on the new build, which they were able to do on the previous Canary build (25915).

With such changes planned for the shell, among others, users who prefer the old Windows 10 look may only be able to rely on third-party apps, and they are far from flawless.