Windows 11 still grinds my gears with these 5 things

Windows 11 is turning four in several months, and with Windows 10 going out of support in less than half a year, the focus on its successor becomes bigger and bigger. Many more users will move to Windows 11 willingly or by force. While Windows 11 is now in a much better state than it was on launch in 2021, the operating system still has a lot of room for improvement.

The following five things grind my gears particularly hard. They are hardly dealbreakers—more like annoyances—which is particularly irritating when you consider that Microsoft has already killed some of Windows 11's exclusive features (WSA and Suggested Actions, just to name a few). Time and resources have been spent on questionable stuff that is already six feet under, while so many obvious and simple features remain unaddressed.

1. Proper Dark Mode

Modern parts of Windows 11 properly support dark mode, which, if you ask me, looks fantastic. However, take one step aside or touch something from the legacy era, and you will be greeted with broken or completely non-existent dark mode. I am not talking about stuff like Phone Dialer from Windows 98 (it is still there even though nobody uses it). A lot of commonly used UI elements do not support dark mode: the file properties window, the paste progress UI, the Control Panel (we will talk about this one later), and a lot more.

It is not just about personal preferences. Proper dark mode is good for accessibility, and with Microsoft putting so much effort into making the OS more accessible to people, it could have pushed a little harder to make Windows more dark mode-friendly.

There are third-party apps that can fix things and make classic UI elements support dark mode. If one enthusiast or a small team could do that, why can't Microsoft?

2. Automatic theme switching

This one builds on top of the previous, and it is quite simple. Why, in 2025, does Windows 11 still not know how to change dark mode to light mode and vice versa on sunset/sunrise or on a custom schedule? macOS, iOS, Android, and countless Linux distros implemented this years ago, but not Microsoft. For some reason, Microsoft continues to ignore such simple things, forcing users to use third-party apps.

3. Control Panel and Settings saga

It all started a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. In 2012, Windows 8 introduced the Settings app with a touch-optimized UI, and ever since, Microsoft has been trying to merge Control Panel into the new thing. 13 years later, I still have to open the Control Panel to enable hibernation on a new Windows 11 installation.

In all fairness, there is progress. Every big Windows 11 update brings some features from the legacy Control Panel to the Settings app. For example, recent Windows 11 preview builds brought modernized mouse and keyboard settings. Still, the progress is rather slow. I am not even talking about stuff like Disk Management or Device Manager. These things do not even have proper high DPI support (they look blurry and ugly on any DPI higher than 100%) or dark mode, not to mention any modernized looks.

Also, I really hate that you cannot open more than one Settings window.

4. Start menu and taskbar

I think people will keep ranting about these until the end of the world, and for a good reason. My primary complaint about the Start menu, however, is not about its design (we finally have some serious progress on that front). It is about the fact that I cannot make it bigger without using stuff like Windhawk mods.

I have a massive display and quite a lot of apps pinned to the Start menu. Why can't I make the Start menu a bit taller so I do not have to scroll to get to my pins? The same goes for the "All apps" list. Windows 10 allowed me to make the Start menu as tall as my display, and I miss this small feature so much.

Finally, literally every desktop operating system lets you move the taskbar (or dock) to either side of the screen, but not Windows 11, which is extra disappointing for users with ultrawide displays or pretty much anyone else who just wants to have it not at the bottom of the screen.

Microsoft is finally letting us get rid of the Recommended section for good. It took the company four years to implement that; maybe in another four years, we will finally have the ability to move the taskbar around.

5. Bad animations and more

This is the reason I stopped using virtual desktops and Task View. I just cannot stand these choppy animations. My computer has a powerful graphics card and a 144Hz monitor with adaptive refresh rate, so the lack of horsepower is 100% not the reason. With all that power, the taskbar still fully disappears for some reason when I switch desktops, Task View is laggy, thumbnail animations are half-baked, and overall, the system drops frames when rendering animations quite often.

At some point, things became so irritating that I went to accessibility settings and turned off all animations for good. It is better not to have them at all rather than dealing with what feels like 19 FPS. I was immediately stunned by how much faster the OS became.

There are quite a few other things I would like to see addressed. For example, the ability to set up Windows 11 without internet and local account support; fewer ads across the operating system; widgets on the desktop (there are rumors about this one, but nothing materialized so far); some performance improvements for the context menus; less confusing feature rollouts; and more.

You might argue that many of these are nitpicks and only hardcore enthusiasts complain about them. But the thing is that enthusiasts are the most vocal, and they play a big role in shaping the operating system's reputation on the internet. Microsoft could make its most loyal fans happy, and other users will be more willing to leave previous versions behind.

What do you think? What would you like to see Microsoft change in Windows 11?

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