These Microsoft Store apps can be used to open File Explorer with tabbed UI, create customizable and personalized desktop widgets, and enhance the look and feel of the taskbar. Apart from that, a few of these apps let you add some nice animated wallpapers to your desktop background in Windows 11. Let us check out these free apps in detail now!
How can I personalize Windows for free?
You can personalize WIndows 11/10 for free using any of the apps that we have mentioned here for Windows 11/10. These Microsoft Store apps work for both Windows 11 and Windows 10. You can use them to customize the desktop background, taskbar, and widgets.
Best Free Microsoft Store Apps to Customize Windows 11
Here are the best free apps on Microsoft Store that enable you to easily customize Windows 11/10:
1] Files – File Manager for Windows
Try this free Microsoft Store app called Files to customize Windows 11. As the name suggests, it is a UWP File Manager app for Windows 11. It lets you open hard drives and folders in different tabs within the same window. This makes it easy to navigate through different directories and folders in distinct drives. It is basically an alternative to the conventional File Explorer in Windows 11. You can get this app from Microsoft Store and then launch it to start using it. To completely replace File Explorer with this app, unpin File Explorer from your taskbar and then pin Files to your taskbar. Now, you can launch this app instead of File Explorer whenever you need to browse through drives, directories, folders, and files. It has a tabbed interface to open up different folders in multiple tabs. You can view some quickly accessible sections in a Sidebar that you can customize. By default, it shows Cloud drives, Network drives, Libraries, and Favorites on the sidebar. Besides that, the standard File Manager features like Delete, Rename, Share, Selection options, and Sort are provided in it. You can also customize and change the layout mode to Details, Tiles, Small Icons, Medium Icons, etc. Apart from that, you can also create new DOCX, PPTX, RTF, XLSX, and more files directly from this app. You can also find features like Dual-pane view, Preview pane, Tab customization, Set Terminal application, Change date format, Theme, and more. It also lets you set up some Files & Folders options including show hidden files and folders, open items with a single click, show extensions for known file types, and more. You can set up these and more functions by clicking on its gear (settings) icon to access and customize various options. All in all, it is a great app to customize and enhance your experience in Windows 11. See: 12 Best Free Microsoft Store apps for Windows 11/10
2] BeWidgets
BeWidgets is another free Microsoft Store apps for Windows 11. It basically lets you create customizable widgets on Windows 11. You can create different kinds of widgets using it that include Photos, Time, Date, App Shortcut, and Finances. Just install this handy app from Microsoft Store and then launch this app. Now, click on the New Widget option to create a new widget. You can select the type of widget you want to make and then type the name of the widget. After that, you can click on the Customize button to edit widget appearance and other properties. For example, if you have created an App Shortcut Widget, click on the Customize button and then add the application URL or select a program file. Furthermore, you can also customize the width, height, background color, font, font size, and more properties of a widget. It also lets you customize some app-related options like startup options, notifications, theme, accent color, and more. If you want to create and use various widgets on your Windows 11 PC, try this easy-to-use app. You can get this app from Microsoft Store. Read: Best Free Calling Apps for Windows 11/10
3] Lively Wallpaper
Lively Wallpaper is a free Microsoft Store app to customize Windows 11. It basically lets you add animated backgrounds and enhance the look and feel of your desktop. You can add rain, sunset, fluids simulation, hill, waves, triangles & lights, and more eye-pleasing animated wallpapers to your desktop. You can preview, delete, edit, and perform some other actions on a wallpaper. It even lets you customize these wallpapers. For that, right-click on the wallpaper and then select the Customise option. This will provide you with some options like intensity, brightness, speed, zoom, image, overlay color, blur quality, 30 FPS lock, panning, lightning, and more that you can customize as per your requirements. At any stage, you can reset these values to default by clicking on the Restore Defaults option. If you want to save wallpaper locally, you can do that. Simply right-click on a wallpaper and then use the Export option to save it in a ZIP folder. You can find a dedicated Add Wallpaper tab where you add new customized wallpapers. It lets you select a file or enter a URL (YouTube, etc.) of wallpaper to use it. This app can be installed from Microsoft Store or by using its program installer file from its official website. There are other Automatic Wallpaper Changer apps too that you may want to take a look at. Read: Best Productivity Apps Windows 11/10 from the Microsoft Store
4] RoundedTB
Another Microsoft Store app that you can use to customize Windows 11 is RoundedTB. This app lets you add rounded corners, segments, and margins to your taskbar in Windows 11. You can customize the margin including top, bottom, right, and left as well as adjust the corner radius to add a rounded effect to your taskbar. Additionally, you can also enable the Dynamic Mode to let it automatically resize your taskbar in order to accommodate the number of icons in it. This makes your taskbar behave similarly to macOS’ Dock. It even lets you show or hide the system tray on the taskbar as per your requirement. You can enable TranslucentTB Compatibility to customize the opacity, blur, and color of your taskbar. However, this feature is in the experimental phase now and might not work as intended as of now.
After customizing your taskbar through this app, your taskbar will look something like the one shown in the above screenshot. If you want to use it, you can get it from here. See: Best Medical apps for Windows 11 on Microsoft Store
5] TaskbarEffectLT
TaskbarEffectLT is a free app on Microsoft Store that allows you to customize your taskbar in Windows 11. You can use it to constantly change the color of our taskbar. You can install this app and then launch it to configure taskbar colors. It lets you select lower, current, and upper taskbar colors as per your preferences. Apart from that, you can enable the Random option on Red, Blue, and Green to let it automatically change the color of the taskbar. You can install this app from Microsoft Store.
6] X Live Wallpaper
X Live Wallpaper can be another Microsoft Store app that you can try to personalize Windows 11. It is quite similar to the above discussed Lively Wallpaper app. As you can guess by its name, it is primarily used to personalize desktop wallpaper with animated cartoons, background themes, games, and more. You can also add custom wallpapers from a URL or a locally saved GIF, Video, HTML, and more files. It lets you preview, export, remove or customize a specific wallpaper. It is a nice app if you want to add some animated wallpapers to your background. To use it, you can get it here. BONUS:
Ultimate Windows Tweaker
With this freeware tool, you can easily customize or personalize your PC by adding adjustments to your Windows operating system. Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a popular tool that supports several Windows customization settings in a single UI. This software supports the Taskbar, Thumbnails, File Explorer, and Modern UI customization options in Windows. Read: Best Free Movie apps available on the Microsoft Store for Windows
Is the Windows 11 upgrade free?
Yes, Windows 11 upgrade is free for everyone. Microsoft has already announced that Windows 11 will be free for all ever since the new OS was disclosed. You can upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 to the same edition as the one you are using currently. Similarly, even Windows 8.1 7 users can upgrade to Windows 11. However, your system must meet the minimum requirements to get the new OS i.e., Windows 11 on your system. Now read: Exhaustive list of best free Windows UWP Apps in Microsoft Store.
