About two weeks ago, Microsoft talked about its upcoming Windows 10 operating system and showed off some of the cool features available in Windows 10. Those of you have watched the live streaming of the event probably have noticed the new transparent Start menu.
All the feature showed off during the event are not present in the currently available 9926 build as both are different. Because of this, there is no option to enable transparent Start menu in the 9926 build of Windows 10.
That said, those of you who can’t wait for the official release of the next build of Windows 10 can use a little software called Glass2K to make the build 9926’s Start menu transparent.
Glass2K is a tiny tool released a couple of years ago to make the adjust the transparency level of Windows 7’s Start menu and taskbar but it surprisingly works great on Windows 10 as well. It lets you adjust the transparency in a jiffy. The other use of Glass2K is that it lets you make your Windows 10 taskbar transparent again.
Make Start menu transparent in Windows 10
Follow the given below instructions to make Windows 10 Start menu transparent with the help of Glass2K software.
Step 1: Visit this page to download Glass2K software. As mentioned above, it was last updated a couple of years ago but is compatible with both 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows 10.
Step 2: Run Glass2K utility to see the following screen. Glass2K is standalone tool and doesn’t require an installation.
Simply click the Save button.
Step 3: Now, press the Windows logo key to see the Start menu. When the Start menu is open, use Ctrl+Shift+0-9 hotkey to change the transparency level of the Start menu. That is, for instance, pressing Ctrl+Shift+1 will make the Start menu fully transparent.
Step 4: And if you want to make the taskbar transparent, open up Glass2K Settings and adjust the same under Taskbar Transparency section.
NOTE 1: With default settings, Glass2K doesn’t automatically load with Windows. So be sure to check Auto-load Glass2K every time Windows starts option. And also, be sure to check Auto-remember every window’s transparency settings option.
NOTE 2: With default settings, when you right-click on a window or Start menu Glass2K shows a menu to help you adjust the transparency level of open window but you might want to disable it to avoid seeing the menu every time you right-click on a window.
To disable it, open Glass2K settings and then select Disabled from the drop down menu right-next to Transparency popup right-click option.
Wu says
This is worthless. Transparency and opacity are not the same thing. This garbage software makes the taskbars opacity alterable which is useless.
Stryker says
It works on both my desktop and the taskbar but has no effect on the start menu. Any ideas or suggestions?