How to Customize Visual Effects and Transparency in Windows 11

The quick answer: Windows 11 keeps its visual effects in two places. For the everyday switches, open Settings > Accessibility > Visual effects and turn Transparency effects and Animation effects on or off. For fine-grained control over shadows, fades, thumbnails and the rest, open the classic Performance Options dialog (part of Advanced system settings) and either pick a one-click preset — Adjust for best appearance or Adjust for best performance — or choose Custom and tick exactly the effects you want. Nothing here requires a registry edit, and every change is reversible.

Below we cover both routes, explain what each toggle actually changes, and set out sensible custom settings that keep Windows looking modern while trimming the animations that make an older PC feel sluggish. If you are coming here from the classic days of tweaking the Desktop Window Manager, there is a note near the end on why the old Vista composition trick no longer applies.

Method 1 — the Accessibility toggles (fastest)

This is the route Microsoft points most people to, and it covers the two effects that matter most for both appearance and perceived speed: transparency and animations. Microsoft's own accessibility guide, Make it easier to focus on tasks, gives the same path — Start > Settings > Accessibility > Visual effects — and the same Transparency effects, Animation effects, Always show scrollbars and notification-duration controls.

1. Open Settings. The quickest way is the keyboard shortcut

   Windows key + I

2. In the left-hand list, select Accessibility.
3. Under the Vision group, click Visual effects. (The full path is Settings > Accessibility > Visual effects.)
4. Set Transparency effects to Off to make the Start menu, taskbar and window backgrounds solid instead of the frosted, semi-transparent blur. Turn it On to restore the glass-like look.
5. Set Animation effects to Off to stop windows, menus and controls from sliding and fading as they open and close. This is the single change that makes the desktop feel most instant.
6. Optionally, turn on Always show scrollbars if you dislike the way scrollbars fade away when not in use, and adjust Dismiss notifications after this amount of time if toasts disappear too quickly.

Changes apply immediately — there is no need to sign out or restart. The same transparency switch also lives at Settings > Personalization > Colors under Transparency effects; it is the identical setting, so flipping it in one place flips it in the other. Microsoft's Personalize your Colors in Windows page describes what that switch does: the effects make some window backgrounds and surfaces appear slightly transparent with an acrylic blur.

Method 2 — the Performance Options dialog (full control)

The Accessibility page only exposes a handful of switches. The complete list of roughly eighteen individual effects — window shadows, menu fades, smooth-scrolling list boxes, thumbnail previews and more — lives in the long-standing Performance Options dialog. It is the same dialog that has shipped since the Windows XP era, and it is still the most powerful way to tune the look.

1. Press Windows key, type Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows, and open the top result. (You can also run

   SystemPropertiesPerformance.exe

   from the Run box, or open Settings, search for advanced system settings, and on the Advanced tab click Settings… under Performance.)
2. The Performance Options window opens on the Visual Effects tab, with four choices at the top:
   • Let Windows choose what's best for my computer — the default; Windows decides based on your hardware.
   • Adjust for best appearance — every effect switched on.
   • Adjust for best performance — every effect switched off, giving a flat, utilitarian look reminiscent of Windows Classic.
   • Custom — you tick individual effects yourself.
3. To keep a clean modern look while dropping the animations, choose Custom and leave these ticked: Smooth edges of screen fonts (essential — turning this off makes text look jagged) and Show thumbnails instead of icons (so File Explorer previews photos and documents).
4. Untick the effects that cost the most perceived speed: Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing, Animate controls and elements inside windows, Fade or slide menus into view, Fade or slide ToolTips into view, and Show shadows under windows.
5. Click Apply, then OK. The desktop redraws instantly.

Note that this dialog and the Accessibility toggles talk to the same underlying settings. If you pick Adjust for best performance here, the Animation effects switch on the Accessibility page will flip itself to Off to match. They are two front-ends over one set of preferences.

Look versus speed — what each effect really costs

It helps to know what you are trading away. Windows 11's compositing is handled by the Desktop Window Manager (DWM), which draws every window through the GPU. On a reasonably modern machine — even a mid-range laptop from the last few years — transparency and shadows are close to free, and turning them off is about taste and legibility more than frame rate.

Where disabling effects genuinely helps is on:

• Low-end or older integrated graphics, where GPU compositing has less headroom.
• Remote Desktop and virtual machines, where every animation frame has to travel over the wire — turning off animations and transparency makes remote sessions markedly more responsive.
• Any PC that simply feels laggy: even when the raw speed is unchanged, removing animations makes windows and menus appear instantly, which most people read as "faster."

So the practical rule is: keep transparency and font smoothing for the modern look, and be the most willing to switch off animations if you want a snappier desktop. That single change delivers most of the perceived benefit with the least visual loss.

A note for Windows 10 users

The Performance Options dialog (Method 2) is identical on Windows 10 and Windows 11 — same window, same list of effects. The difference is Method 1: on Windows 10 the transparency switch lives at Settings > Personalization > Colors > Transparency effects, and the animation switch is under Settings > Ease of Access > Display > Show animations in Windows. Windows 11 consolidated these into the single Accessibility > Visual effects page described above.

For more current walkthroughs, browse the Windows Now how-to guides, and for the older material — including Kenney's Vista-era tweaks — see the windows-now.com archive.