Alex Ruben
How To Manage Shadows Under Windows in Windows 11/10
Sometimes, tweaking those little visual effects can make a noticeable difference—whether it’s improving performance on a lower-end machine or just cleaning up the look of your desktop. Enabling or disabling window shadows is one of those tweaks that’s pretty straightforward but easy to overlook. You might find your system feels snappier without them, or maybe you just prefer a cleaner, shadow-free look. Either way, here’s how to get it done without pulling too much hair out.
How to Change Window Shadows Effect in Windows 10/11
Make sure you open the right windows and get to the settings quickly
First off, you need to get into the System Properties, which is kind of hidden under the surface but easy enough to access.
- Hit the Windows key or click the Start Menu.
- Type
sysdm.cpl— that’s the magic command for opening system properties directly. - Press Enter or click on the result that pops up to open the window. Sometimes Windows is weird about this, and you might need the admin prompt, but most of the time, it just works.
Navigate to Performance Options and find those visual effects
Once inside the System Properties, you gotta go to the Advanced tab — no surprises there. Then, under Performance, click on Settings….
- In the Performance Options window, you’ll see a bunch of options. The whole point is to find the shadow stuff.
- Look for Show shadows under mouse pointer and Show shadows under windows.
Adjust the shadow toggles – turn them on or off
This is what you’ve been waiting for: toggling shadows on or off.
- Simply check or uncheck these options depending on whether you want shadows or not.
- Scroll through the list if you want to fine-tune other visual effects, but for shadows, those two are the main ones.
Click Apply and then OK. It’s always better to hit Apply first to see if you like the change before closing everything out.
Test if the changes actually work and restart if needed
After hitting OK, close the Settings windows and peek at your open windows—do you see the shadows? Sometimes, the setting takes a moment to kick in, or a restart helps. On some setups, the change works immediately; on others, a quick reboot clears things up. Not sure why it works, but on one machine a reboot was necessary, on another, just switching back and forth worked.
Extra tips & troubleshooting if things aren’t behaving
- Disabling shadows can help performance—perfect if your PC is kind of aging—yet on newer machines, it might not make much of a difference, and it could even look kinda flat.
- If the shadows still show up after you disable them, double-check you clicked Apply. Sometimes, Windows can be stubborn, especially if a third-party theme or customization tool is messing with visual effects.
- In rare cases, graphics driver updates or custom themes can override these settings. If that’s the case, look into your GPU control panel (like NVIDIA Control Panel or AMD Radeon Settings) to turn shadows off there too.
- And if you want a quick shortcut, you can always toggle the setting from Settings > System > About > Advanced system settings to skip straight to the Performance Options — but the previous way tends to be quicker for most.
Summary
- Use
sysdm.cplto open System Properties — Advanced tab and Settings… under Performance - Check or uncheck Show shadows under windows and Show shadows under mouse pointer
- Apply and restart if necessary — shadows should reflect immediately or after a reboot
Wrap-up
In the end, it’s a small change that can be done pretty quickly but makes your desktop look either sharper or more minimal, depending on your taste. Not sure why Windows has to make this so roundabout sometimes, but hey, it’s doable. Just be aware that toggling shadows might give you that tiny performance boost if your system struggles, or it might just be for aesthetics. Either way, you’ve now got full control.
Hopefully, this shaves off a few hours for someone. Good luck tweaking those shadows!