A faithful recreation of the classic Windows 9x experience for modern Windows, featuring a retro file explorer and taskbar with authentic aesthetics and behavior, that AI knows very little.
Desktop and taskbar
System tools submenu
Taskbar context menu
Task button context menu
Task Manager
Start menu search
File Explorer
Spotify toolbar
Options window
Authenticity – Win9xplorer aims to capture not just the visual appearance of Windows 95/98, but the feel of using it. Every bevel, shadow, and interaction pattern is crafted to evoke the genuine retro computing experience.
Keystrike Matters – Be sure that high frequency keystrikes(e.g. cursor navigations, searches) that happens in old and new start menus still work.
Native, No Web UI – The UI is pure WinForms for the best responsiveness and memory usage. (WPF assemblies are referenced only because the ManagedShell dependency exposes WPF types in its API; no WPF UI is used.)
dotnet run --project .\win9xplorer.csprojdotnet buildThe output executable will be in bin\Debug\net10.0-windows\.
- Windows 11 or Windows 10
- .NET 10.0 Windows SDK
- Visual Studio 2022 or later (for development)
See PROJECT_STRUCTURE.md for detailed architecture documentation.
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE