Windows accessibility request you might relate to

[DeeFeeBro]

Hi everyone,

I’m new here. I’ve been reading for a little while but haven’t posted until now. I thought I’d share something that might be relevant to some of you.

I recently submitted feedback to Microsoft asking them to add an accessibility option in Windows to disable or customise the red “low disk space” drive bars in File Explorer. For me (and maybe for others too), sudden red warning colours can feel overwhelming and/or stressful.

If this sounds familiar, you can support the request by upvoting it here: The Windows Insider Program

Replying and posting on forums takes me a bit of time while I’m getting used to a new community, so I might be a little slow at first.

I hope this is useful to share. Thanks for having me, and I’m looking forward to joining in the discussions here. If this kind of post isn’t quite in line with the rules, please let me know and I’ll adjust.

There’s no guarantee Microsoft will change it, but it would be a great quality-of-life improvement for me. I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but it does.

 

[Jumpinbare]

I find their insistence that I upgrade my mom's computer to Windows 11 to be really annoying and distracting when the box suddenly appears. I use Linux 99% of the time, and when Windows 10 support goes away in October, my Linux use will go to 100%

 

[Outdated]

I use Linux 99% of the time, and when Windows 10 support goes away in October, my Linux use will go to 100%

My last Windows was XP.

 

[Jumpinbare]

My last Windows was XP.

I had to use Windows 7 and 10 at work. But I'm retired now, so...

 

[Judge]

Having simply typed "changing low disk space notifier in windows file explorer" into a search engine textbox, have you considered alleged third-party solutions to this problem? I ask as YouTube seems to have a number of content providers claiming to have a solution to this issue.

Which might be a more pragmatic approach given how cavalier Microsoft seems to be towards their customers in general over the past few years. And like other software/hardware vendors that they seemed to have refocused mostly on AI development and little else, often forgetting their primary product and primary customers.

Particularly at this very moment given that Microsoft seems to have its hands full with having released a patch known as "KB5063878" (for build # 26100.4946) which apparently causing problems for users with certain SSDs under certain circumstances. IMO unforgivable for any OS developer.

Microsoft's Latest Windows 11 Update Is Reportedly 'Killing' Some SSDs

Great timing for Microsoft though, given Windows 10 support ends this October. Time to move to another platform or pay allegedly $30 for minimal security updates for 12 months. Though it seems Microsoft probably won't extend any courtesies to Windows 10 users beyond that.

Microsoft will charge Windows 10 users $30 per year for security updates

Download Linux Mint 22.1 - Linux Mint

 

[NB79]

i hate when they put red in games or other with text etc, idk if its my monitor, but i have trouble reading and hurts my eyes.

 

[Outdated]

i hate when they put red in games or other with text etc, idk if its my monitor, but i have trouble reading and hurts my eyes.

A graphic design lesson I was taught when I was a printer - 25% of caucasian males have a form of colour blindness and can't read red text on a dark background. It should never be done.

 

[Jumpinbare]

A graphic design lesson I was taught when I was a printer - 25% of caucasian males have a form of colour blindness and can't read red text on a dark background. It should never be done.

I am Caucasian, Native American, and African (that I know of), but Caucasian is the largest component, so was intrigued by this. So I looked at a lot of red text on dark backgrounds with large and small text. Apparently I do not have this colour blindness.

 

[Outdated]

I am Caucasian, Native American, and African (that I know of), but Caucasian is the largest component, so was intrigued by this. So I looked at a lot of red text on dark backgrounds with large and small text. Apparently I do not have this colour blindness.

I can read it but find it takes more concentration than normal. I was also curious about this, when I first heard about it was when I printed someone's business cards that were red text on a black background. I was just the printer, not the designer. I took one of these cards to my local pub and got lots of other people to look at it. Most could read it but some were like me and struggled with it, and two people said they couldn't see any text at all and that it just looked solid black to them.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

I fortunately have very good colour vision, made my living looking at colour, even then used the spectrophometer as it is not subjective.

 

[Crabcore]

This thread made me realize that it's probably been years since I've seen a 'low disk space' type of error. Ever since streaming has become more convenient, it seems like I have more space than I'll ever need in a lifetime.

Another interesting avenue might just be preventing running out of space in the first place, if that's an option. In the past, it used to be recommended that you stay above the 10% empty threshold for optimal performance, but that might've changed in recent years.

 

[Judge]

Another interesting avenue might just be preventing running out of space in the first place, if that's an option. In the past, it used to be recommended that you stay above the 10% empty threshold for optimal performance, but that might've changed in recent years.

Yes. Another consideration likely revolves around the number of computer users utterly unaware of the day-to-day diskspace that can be taken up by temporary files and various caches of applications.

Compounding this issue are the handful of utilities applications that can purge such files, and whether or not they create more problems than solutions. A classic example being "C Cleaner", which is essentially blacklisted for just that.

Why You Shouldn’t Download CCleaner for Windows Anymore

Then again there are other such applications like "Stacer" a Linux application I use all the time without incident. All to periodically purge my hard drive of unecessary files that just clog up a drive and slow it down. Now that I think of it, Microsoft added their own such utility allegedly that performs such tasks safely for Windows 11 some time back. But yeah, in general one should be very careful about third-party apps like these.

 

[Outdated]

Then again there are other such applications like "Stacer" a Linux application I use all the time without incident.

I've never used such a thing, there's no need. Linux doesn't start getting slower and misbehaving when it's drive gets full, I know this because I've done it. The first you know of a problem is when you try to save a file and it tells you "not enough disk space for this action". It doesn't fall flat on it's face like Windows does, it just tells you you can't save anything until you free up some space.

 

[Crabcore]

I wonder if that has to do with the lightweight nature of it all. Windows is so bloaty now, doing whatever the heck it wants without you knowing anything about it, putting more layers of GUI juju into the mix and seemingly constantly updating itself to no end, especially right when you need your setup to just power on and work. Linux, on the other hand, lets you perform updates when it's convenient for you, or for most people, when a package won't install correctly and the best fix is a quick update / upgrade combo.

(Also just to clarify, I absolutely love Windows for the tasks I use it for and almost none of my workflow can be replicated on Linux without me literally building new programs from scratch that won't emulate in Wine no matter what I do, but the truth is, there's a high cost when working with heavy, bloated tools like these)

 

[Outdated]

I wonder if that has to do with the lightweight nature of it all.

Windows lives on it's swap file, a bit of extra disk space that Windows can use as fake ram when it needs to, and it needs to all the time.

Linux creates a clearly defined space on the disk to be used as a swap file and nothing can overwrite that space. The swap file in Linux has pretty much become defunct now, unless you're running a computer that has something like only 2 gig of ram. Linux has much better memory management than Windows which is why it's also so much faster. My computers haven't used a single byte of swap file space in over 20 years now.