Windows 11 utilizes “Acrylic” and “Mica” design materials to make the operating system feel modern. This design language is most obvious when you click the Action Center (the Wi-Fi, volume, and battery icons in the bottom-right corner) or the Start Menu. The background of these menus is translucent, heavily blurring your desktop wallpaper behind them.
While this frosted glass aesthetic—known as Transparency Effects—looks beautiful, it requires the GPU to constantly render real-time blur effects. On older laptops, budget PCs, or virtual machines without dedicated graphics cards, rendering this blur can cause the Start Menu to stutter, lag, or feel sluggish when opening. You can disable this visual effect to make Windows 11 feel instantly snappier.
How to Disable Transparency Effects (Background Blur)
You can turn off the frosted glass effect globally from the Windows 11 Settings app.
- Click the Start button and select the Settings gear icon (or press Windows Key + I on your keyboard).
- In the left-hand navigation pane, click on Personalisation.
- In the main window, click on Colours.
- Look for the toggle switch labelled Transparency effects (which controls the translucent windows and surfaces).
- Click the toggle switch to turn it Off.
The change is instantaneous. The Action Center, the Start Menu, and the title bars of all modern applications will immediately change from a blurry, translucent glass to a solid, opaque colour (either stark white or dark grey, depending on whether you use Light or Dark mode). Because your PC no longer has to render real-time blur calculations, opening menus will feel noticeably faster and more responsive.