Microsoft redesigns an old part of Windows 11 UI with a faster, more modern variant

The new Run is here with dark theme support, better performance, faster access to the user directory, and more.

The Run dialog is a pretty old part of Windows. As old as the Start menu itself. It debuted in Windows 95 alongside its Win + R shortcut. Over the decades, the Run dialog box has seen little to no updates. Now, Microsoft thinks it is time to give it a long-overdue redesign.

Today, Microsoft released new Windows 11 preview builds, and with them, the company announced the redesigned Run dialog. Microsoft says the new variant offers three key upgrades:

• Modern design: The dialog now matches the rest of Windows 11's aesthetics, including dark mode support.
• Better performance: Microsoft says the redesigned Run is faster than the previous version, and it only takes about 94 ms to appear on the screen.
• New features: You can now access the user directory by typing ~\

In the announcement post, Microsoft also shared some insights into how the redesigned Run came to be. The company acknowledged that users and developers have very strong muscle memory, and those who rely on Run expect fast performance and instant responsiveness. As such, Microsoft took extra care to ensure the new version maintains solid performance and keeps the UI minimal, albeit more modern.

To make meaningful changes to the Run dialog, Microsoft studied how people use it and discovered that the existing dialog has a median time-to-show of 103 ms. Also, as it turned out, very few people use the "Browse" button (only 0.0038% of users with a sample of 35 million), which is why the new version has no such button. Interestingly, Microsoft also discovered that a common use for the Run dialog is to paste something and copy it again as a makeshift formatting cleaner.

Microsoft also revealed early prototypes of the redesigned Run dialog. After extensive work, developers managed to reduce the median time-to-show time to 94 ms, and Microsoft expects this number to go lower in future updates. Also, besides new looks and better performance, the new Run dialog makes it much easier to open your user directory, which is a handy improvement.

Right now, the new Run dialog is gradually rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Experimental channel. You can learn more about it in the official announcement post.

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Posted Saturday 2 May 2026 at 7:56 am AEST (my time).

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