Earlier this month, we covered some unofficial third-party Windows utilities that promise to improve Windows. These included tiny11 Builder, which now supports ESD in addition to WIM, an updated Wintoys that has also received several recent improvements, and Winpilot Adblock which, as the name suggests, claims to block all the annoying ads that have become part of Windows 11.
There are also those who don’t like the search bar in Windows 11. Maybe it’s the way it looks or the ads there. If you’re in that category and looking for a small, lightweight app to hide the search bar, you can do so with TranslucentSM, where the SM stands for Start Menu, and the initial idea behind the app was to allow Windows 11 to adjust the opacity levels of the Start Menu.
The latest version, 0.6.9, of the app fixed an issue so that the hide search bar option now also works on Windows 11 24H2.
0.6.9
Another bug fix release (bruh)
- Hide Search now works 24 hours a day
- Fix layout breaking when hide recommended + hide search (finally)
Other than that, there have been a slew of releases from the app developer. You can also hide the featured section, which is like the main hub of many of the ads and promos.
And the app also works on Windows 10. The changelogs of the latest releases are shown below:
0.5
- Edit button in the Windows 10 Start menu
- Uses UCRT instead of msvcrt
- separate dll (no more false positives)
0.6
- Hide is recommended
- Hide what white border you see yourself
- Make w10 start menu hamburger background transparent
0.6.5
Release bug fixes
- Fixed layout breaking when Hide Search + Hide is recommended
- Windows 10 crash fix
If you find this utility interesting, you can download it from its official GitHub Stock. Keep in mind that this is a third-party app, and therefore, as always, you should proceed with caution.