Start Bar Fader

Start Bar Fader is a lightweight and portable software tool that lets you make some adjustments to the Start bar when it comes to transparency, as the name implies. It can be easily configured, even by users with little or no experience in such tools.
Since installation is not a prerequisite, you can drop the EXE file anywhere on the hard drive and run it immediately.
Alternatively, you can move Start Bar Fader to a USB flash drive or similar device, in order to run it on any workstation with minimum effort.
The most important aspect is that the Windows Registry does not receive entry updates, and files do not remain on the hard drive after program removal.
Upon deployment Start Bar Fader creates an icon in the system tray area and automatically applies the default options to the Start bar. By double-clicking this icon or opening its context menu, you can bring up the Options panel to make adjustments.
Therefore, you can specify the minimum and maximum transparency level, enable an animation effect, make the icons transparent or smaller, as well as apply all these settings on multiple desktops (up to 10). Last but not least, you can enable wrapping mode for the mouse cursor.
Start Bar Fader barely uses CPU and system memory, so it doesn't burden the computer's overall activity. It has a good response time and works well, without making the operating system hang, crash or pop up error dialogs. We haven't encountered any issues in our tests. On the downside, Start Bar Fader has not been updated for a very long time, and it is not supported by newer Windows editions.