If we are people who spend many hours in front of the computer, it is always appreciated that the desktop is not excessively full of icons, documents or folders, since, although we do not notice it at the moment, it is something that ends up generating stress.
Having a clear main interface is very necessary to avoid falling into the mental disorder that causes it. desk Windows, which influences our behavior in front of the computer.
Luckily, thanks to Windows 11 we have at our disposal several configurations that can be used to easily modify the appearance of the desktop and make it much more minimalist and less stressful.
These are changes that are easier than you might imagine at first, without the need to download any application or spend any money, just use what Microsoft’s own operating system offers.
Let’s see what are those tricks and configurations that we can carry out so that our desktop has a minimal look. But, first of all, we advise you to have the OS fully updated.
How to have a more minimalist look in Windows 11:
desktop theme
The first thing will be to choose a Windows desktop background and a color scheme that is compatible with a minimalist design.
Windows 11 will allow us if we do the following:
- we press Win + I and we entered the Setting.
- After that we are going to Personalization.
- Then we will Topics and we choose a combination of wallpapers and colors from the suggested themes or from those we can obtain from the Microsoft Store that shows a sober, without fanfare and linear design.
Next, we have the option to modify the desktop background that comes with the theme that we have just applied.
This is how you could make it even more minimalist:
- Let’s go to the tab Personalization from the Settings page as we have done before.
- we select Background.
- Click on the dropdown menu next to Customize your background and we choose the preferred option.
- If we really want to be completely minimalist, you should go for Solid color and choose a tone that is on the dark side.

The mess
In many cases, the desktop is the destination for any file that needs to be saved or quickly accessed at any given time, staying there for a long time and not being used.
if we have many icons, folders and files on the desktopit is best to remove them (delete or save them elsewhere) so that the desktop is free or practically.
We can be more radical and quickly hide absolutely everything that is currently on our Windows 11 desktop:
- We right-click on an empty space on your main desktop.
- select See and uncheck show desktop icons.

If you think this method is radical, another option is to put desktop icons in a single folder and make that the only element visible on the screen.
In this way we will have a highly minimalist desktop, but also the icons and files that we had occupying everything at hand.
hide the trash can
If you have done the above, you will realize that the recycle bin icon did not disappear and that what we have in that folder where we have saved everything is a simple shortcut.
Do not worry that it can be hidden if we do the following:
- We are going to Settingwe choose Personalization and we are going to Topics.
- Then we click on Desktop Icon Settings.
- Now all that remains is to uncheck the Recycle Bin and press on Accept.

Customize the taskbar
To have a minimalist style, we must make sure that the taskbar also follows this concept, making it only the purely essential programs.
Follow these steps to customize your taskbar:
- Right click on the taskbar and click on Taskbar Settings.
- If we use them (normal thing) you should turn off both chat as task viewand even also Widgets.
- We expanded the section Other System Tray Icons and we deactivate any icon we do not use frequently so that it does not appear in the bar and is as minimalist as possible.
- We expanded Taskbar Behaviors and configured the bar to our liking, always making the minimalist prevail.

After modifying everything we have done, all that remains is to try to make the start menu more minimalist.
We are going to do it as follows:
- We click on the start menu button and then press with the right button in some area of this where there is nothing.
- we give in startup settings.
- In Design, we select more pinned itemsince it is the most simplified option available.
- While modifying Start menu settings, we can turn off unnecessary options such as Show recently added apps either Show most used appsalthough we make it clear that this is at the choice of each one.

The next time we open the Start menu, we must right-click on any icon that we do not want to appear and we can unpin them from the launcher so that only the most necessary ones appear immediately.
With everything we have told you, we are going to make our Windows 11 much more minimalist in appearance.