Windows enthusiasts are always coming up with ways to tinker with the operating system to change up the aesthetics, minimize bloatware, or sometimes just have fun and push the boundaries of what they can do. Now, an app has emerged that lets you travel back in time and run Windows 11 in a Windows 10 environment – sort of. Confused? Well, fear not, let us explain…
YouTuber LagLife is the developer of the RevertSV app, which allows Windows 11 users to revert the operating system back to the Windows 10 user interface. What the app actually does, however, is give Windows 11 a new look (in a very fancy way), so you essentially have all the benefits of Windows 11, but with the added bonus of not having to look at it! You’ve got the Windows 10 interface (or a large portion of it).
RevertSV is the product of about three months of work by LagLife, and there is now a release version that Newwin spotted, which can be downloaded from the Internet ArchiveWhile this is billed as a release build – and it certainly works, according to the YouTube footage (from the developer and others elsewhere on the platform) – there are certain caveats here.
It’s based on Windows 11 21H2, which has been out of support for a long time, and there are a number of bugs and issues – for example, Windows search isn’t working properly for many users, which is a major bummer. Obviously, this isn’t something you’ll want to run on your own PC, and as Neowin recommends, it’s an app that, if you want to try it out, you should only do so in a virtual machine.
Or, more likely, you can just watch in awe at RevertSV’s YouTube demos, as compiled below by LagLife.
Of course, not everyone is a fan of Windows 11, and the operating system has struggled to gain popularity. Even though it’s almost three years old, Windows 11 has only just reached 30% adoptionGranted, some of that is due to the hardware requirements (which are stricter than Windows 10), but it could also be due to unwanted features and AI or ads popping up everywhere and off-putting interface changes (of which there are quite a few).
Windows 10 is still the king of the Microsoft desktop OS arena, and that could mean that once RevertSV is finished and polished – and LagLife offers the “script to revert an existing installation to Windows 10 UI in one click” that the developer promised in their first youtube video There may well be a lot of interest in this project for this clever little work of art.
There are probably quite a few people who want the features of Windows 11, but without the look and feel of the new operating system. They want to enjoy the classic Windows 10 interface instead.
Personally, I’d like to see the RevertSV app finished and perfected so I can go back in time to when I was a teenage computer science student and messing around.