How To: Enable Spotlight UI Panel on Desktop in Windows 11 Build 25197+

In the Windows 11 Insider Build 25197, enthusiasts have once again discovered several hidden features that are in development but not yet ready for public testing. In particular, a new panel called Spotlight UI was found, which is displayed on top of the desktop and allows you to quickly switch wallpapers, and also provides additional information about the current background image.

The Spotlight UI panel opens when you right-click on the “More about this image” icon on your desktop. It appears if you have turned on Windows: Interesting (aka Windows Spotlight) for your desktop wallpaper. By the way, the panel can be put into compact mode with fewer buttons so that it does not take up much free space on the screen.

Spotlight UI is disabled by default, but you can force it to be enabled using the ViVeTool utility. Please note that this feature is a work in progress and may become unstable.

Instruction

1. Download the ViVeTool utility by this link. This is a new version of ViveTool 0.3.1, the details of which we described in our material.
2. Unpack the downloaded archive to any place on your computer (for example, you can create a ViVeTool folder in the root of the C: drive and place the files there).
3. Open a command prompt as an administrator (for example, by typing CMD in the search and selecting the appropriate item).
4. In the command line, navigate to the folder with ViVeTool using the command cd /d , then press Enter. For example: cd /d "C:\ViVeTool"
5. Type the commands from the list below in sequence, pressing Enter after each one:
   • vivetool /enable /id:39710659 /store:both
   • vivetool /enable /id:40268500 /store:both
   • vivetool /enable /id:39880030 /store:both
6. Make sure that the command line shows the message “Successfully set feature configuration”
7. Restart your computer to apply the changes.
8. Open the Settings app and go to the Personalization section.
9. Choose a Windows Spotlight theme, or go to the Background page and turn on Windows: Interesting under Personalize Background.

If you want to disable animations, then use the following commands:

• vivetool /disable /id:39710659 /store:both
• vivetool /disable /id:40268500 /store:both
• vivetool /disable /id:39880030 /store:both