Aurora taskbar

Aurora replaces your Windows taskbar with a frosted strip whose surface is alive. Ribbons of light drift across it in your theme's colors; play some music and they turn into the spectrum of what you hear, bass under your apps and treble at the edges. When it is quiet they breathe with your CPU load instead. A torch of light follows the pointer, the focused app gets a halo, and a wallpaper theme recolors the field live.

On the left, the start button and a clock. In the middle, your pinned and running apps, each icon floating on the field: a click launches, focuses or minimizes, and an app with several windows opens a flyout of live previews. On the right, a now-playing chip with the album art, three rings for CPU, memory and GPU, and an optional system tray. Click the chip and a deck rises above the bar: transport, seek bar, volume and vitals meters.

Settings cover pins, the tray, the light field and the readouts. Low-spec machines and reduced-motion preferences get a still field.