Raditya Aryaputra, a Jakarta-based UI/UX designer, has published a comprehensive Windows 11 redesign concept that imagines an operating system freed from promotional recommendations, news feed widgets, and front-and-center AI. The renders, first highlighted by Neowin, land at a moment when Microsoft’s desktop is carrying more cloud upsells and Copilot branding than many users want—and the concept’s back-to-basics philosophy has quickly drawn both applause and skepticism.
What the Concept Actually Changes
Aryaputra’s redesign touches the four surfaces Windows users interact with most: Start, taskbar, Widgets, and search. The philosophy is subtraction, not addition. Instead of trying to sell you something on every panel, the shell gets out of the way.
Start menu becomes an app-first launcher again. The Recommended section—where Windows 11 currently shows recently opened files and Store suggestions—disappears entirely. In its place, apps are grouped into logical categories (Productivity, Creative, Utilities, Games) with a “Most Used” row driven by your actual launch history, not algorithmic nudges. Search sits at the top as a utility, not a dominant web-search box.
Taskbar shifts from a fixed strip to a modular dashboard. Users can choose which information modules appear: weather, calendar, media controls, system resource meters, clipboard tools, virtual desktop indicators—all toggled from a single customization pane. The default layout remains close to today’s taskbar, so casual users aren’t hit with a wall of widgets on day one.
Widgets lose the MSN-powered news feed entirely. What’s left is a utility-only panel: weather, calendar events, to-do lists, battery status, traffic, and third-party widgets, all free of clickbait headlines. The board becomes a dashboard for your day, not a content portal.
Copilot stays in Windows but becomes a search companion rather than a persistent sidebar or taskbar resident. It lives inside Windows Search, surfacing only when you invoke it with a query like “find my document from yesterday” or “turn off notifications.” It does not recommend products or flash a daily greeting.
Aryaputra’s concept also separates the calendar flyout from notifications, giving each its own focused panel. The calendar shows meetings and dates without unrelated alerts; notifications stay grouped by app and urgency.
What the Changes Mean for You
For Home Users
If Microsoft ever shipped something this clean, your daily PC experience would feel quieter. No more Start menu promotions for games you don’t own, no more news stories in the Widgets panel you never read, and Copilot would only appear when you explicitly ask for help. The trade-off is that you’d lose the convenience of one-click recent files from Start if that’s something you rely on. The modular taskbar might tempt you to add too many widgets, but the concept’s defaults are restrained—so a setup like yours would likely look a lot like today’s taskbar unless you went digging in settings.
For IT Administrators
This redesign would cut hours of post-deployment cleanup. Today, many organizations run scripts to kill the “consumer experience” on managed PCs: they disable Web Search in Start, hide Widgets, remove Copilot, and suppress Store suggestions. A shell that ships without those distractions by default—and with policy controls for every module—would mean fewer tickets about “weird pop-ups” and more predictable user training. The risk is customization fragmentation. If every employee builds a unique taskbar, support teams face harder troubleshooting. Enterprise Group Policy would need to lock down which modules are available and which are pinned.
For Developers
The concept doesn’t directly change APIs, but it signals user appetite for less cluttered OS surfaces. If you build apps that integrate with Windows Widgets or Copilot, the takeaway is that users want opt-in, contextual help rather than always-visible prompts. A feed-free Widgets platform could become more attractive for tools that add real utility (calendars, dashboards, system monitors) and less attractive for content recommendations.
How We Got Here: The Rise of Promotional Windows
Windows 11 launched in October 2021 with a cleaner aesthetic than Windows 10—centered taskbar, rounded corners, softer materials—but it also introduced new advertising vectors. The Widgets board, which could have been a useful glanceable panel, became an MSN.com news pipeline. The Start menu’s Recommended section began showing files from OneDrive and SharePoint whether you wanted them or not. Store suggestions crept into the Start menu and taskbar. In 2023, Microsoft added a Copilot sidebar, then moved it to a full-fledged app, then integrated it into the taskbar and system tray.
Each addition made the OS more “helpful” on paper. In practice, many users felt the shell was no longer neutral territory. The backlash was loudest in enthusiast communities, but it spilled into enterprise complaints: IT departments spent hours suppressing consumer-grade promotions that looked unprofessional in a workplace.
Microsoft itself has acknowledged the tension, if indirectly. In 2024, the company added a toggle to remove Widgets news feeds—but only for users in the European Economic Area, to comply with the Digital Markets Act. Everyone else still sees headlines in Widgets. The Start menu’s Recommendations section can be reduced but not fully removed; you can clear the list, but the “Recommended” heading remains. Full control remains locked behind third-party tools like Start11 or StartAllBack.
Aryaputra’s concept lands squarely inside this fatigue. It doesn’t demonize AI—Copilot is still there when you search. It doesn’t reject modern design—the Fluent aesthetic stays. But it draws a line: the OS should not sell to you by default.
What to Do Now (Even Though This Is Just a Concept)
This is a fan concept, not a product plan. But the ideas it surfaces are already being championed by users on Feedback Hub and in the Windows Insider community. If you want Microsoft to pay attention, here’s what you can do:
- Vote in Feedback Hub. Search for existing suggestions like “Remove Recommended section from Start menu,” “Add a Widgets feed off toggle for all regions,” and “Make Copilot less intrusive.” Upvote the ones that match your preference.
- Use built-in controls where available. In Settings > Personalization > Start, you can reduce Recommendations by toggling off “Show recently opened items” and “Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more.” Not a full removal, but a trim. In Settings > Personalization > Taskbar, you can hide Copilot and Widgets. In the Widgets panel, click the gear icon and turn off “Show news and interests” if the option exists in your region (currently limited to EEA).
- Try third-party tools—with caution. Apps like Start11 (Stardock), StartAllBack, and ExplorerPatcher can achieve a clean Start and taskbar right now. These modify system components, so always back up and understand the risks before installing.
- Advocate at your organization. If you’re an IT admin, document the time you spend sanitizing Windows 11 for enterprise use and share it with your Microsoft account team. The business case for cleaner defaults gets stronger when it’s quantified.
- Watch Insider builds for hints. Microsoft often tests shell changes in the Dev and Beta channels first. Keep an eye on build notes for phrases like “options to simplify the taskbar” or “new personalization settings for Widgets.”
The company rarely ships a full redesign from a fan render, but it does absorb individual ideas. The Feed-free Widgets option in the EEA was a direct response to regulatory pressure—and it proves that removing the feed is technically trivial. The question is whether Microsoft will offer it globally without being forced.
Outlook: What to Watch For
Microsoft is walking a tightrope. The Copilot+ PC push, launched in May 2024, ties AI deeply to Windows, and Redmond wants consumers to see AI as a reason to upgrade. That ambition sits awkwardly with concepts that hide AI away. Yet the same company has been incrementally expanding Start menu customization—24H2 added grid vs. list view options and let you pin more apps—and insider builds have tested flighted Widgets behavior changes.
The most plausible path isn’t Aryaputra’s full design. It’s a gradual adoption of its principles: a toggle to remove the Recommended heading, a global “no feed” Widgets setting, a modular taskbar that ships defaulting to minimal, and a Copilot that learns to stay quiet until you type. Those changes would cost Microsoft some initial engagement metrics but would buy back trust.
For now, the concept succeeds as a design provocation. It tells Microsoft, in high-fidelity pixels, that many users don’t want a desktop that sells—they want a desktop that works, then gets out of the way. If enough people echo that, the next Windows update might just listen.