Desktop (23H2)

The Windows 11 Desktop works much as it did in Windows 10, but it has been updated with new iconography--as evidenced by the Recycle Bin--and a new Themes feature that lets you combine your favorite desktop backgrounds, colors, sounds, and mouse cursors to provide a more personalized experience.

We looked at the basics of the Windows 11 Desktop and its new visual design in What's New and Familiar in Windows 11 Version 23H2. Here, we explore its new features and how you can work around some of its new limitations.
What's changed with the Desktop context menus?
When you right-click the Desktop or any of the icons on the Desktop, Windows 11 displays a context menu that provides options related to that specific object. For example, when you right-click the Recycle Bin, you see a menu item, "Empty the Recycle Bin" that only applies to the selected object and others that are common to various user interface elements.

And when you right-click an icon for a folder, shortcut, app, or another file, you will see several items that apply to whatever type of object you've selected.

This behavior should be familiar to most Windows 10 users. But aside from the obvious new visual style,
there are other changes to these context menus in Windows 11 related to Microsoft's simplification efforts in this release: These menus tend to be much shorter than the similar context menus you saw in Windows 10 because Microsoft has replaced some common text-based options with icons, and because there are now fewer options than before.

Let's take a closer look.
Make sense of the icons in the new context menus
In Windows 10, the Desktop context menus displayed text-based options for commands like Cut, Copy, Paste, Rename, Share, and Delete appear alongside the other menu items. But in Windows 11, these commands have been changed to icons that all appear in a single row at the top (or bottom) of the context menu.

This can be confusing, and these icons will be as indecipherable as Egyptian hieroglyphics to many. Fortunately, you can mouse-over each icon to display a tooltip that explains what each does and provides its keyboard shortcut.

As confusing, the row of icons can appear at the bottom of the context menu instead of the top. But this is purposeful: Windows 11 will always display these icons as close as possible to the mouse cursor, and if the item you're right-clicking is close to the bottom of the Desktop, the context menu that appears may have to display above the mouse cursor. And so the icons will be on the bottom.

Display the classic, Windows 10-style context menus
The Desktop context menu icons described above are confusing enough, but Microsoft has also removed some options that were available in the Windows 10 context menus. And that can be problematic if you are used to using any of those options.

You can't configure Windows 11 to display the old Windows 10-style context menus by default. But you can at least a...