Windows 11 basic customization of the taskbar

[ChrisGreaves]

I was going to say “there’s good news and bad news”, but the good news is bad: you can make the taskbar behave more like Win10, but often you must take extra steps.

(1) Aligning the task bar to the left of the screen


(2) Removing unwanted icons from the taskbar: right-click and “UnPin”.
In one or more applications, I used RevoUninstaller to flush the application (Edge? OneDrive) but still had to unpin the icon from the task bar.

(3) How to Pin Almost Anything to the Windows 11 Taskbar Basically, open the application using a sledgehammer, and once its icon appears in the taskbar, right-click the icon and choose “Pin to Taskbar”. (bad, because you can’t just pin an existing shortcut; you have to load the application which, frankly, may not yet be installed)

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In the rightmost circled area you can see that I have managed to load Thunderbird, Excel, Word, Firefox, MSPaint and Notepad to my taskbar,

(4) Windows File Explorer (left-pointing arrow)
But see this post (below)

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I need help with File Explorer which I use as a shortcut whose Properties read

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C:\Windows\explorer.exe /e,T:\maint

This used to open File Explorer in my T:\MAINT folder where sit a slew of less-often used shortcuts and maintainer tools.
I have changed the icon on the desktop shortcut to a red button to distinguish it from the regular Explorer icon,
I open Explorer, the yellow-folder icon appears in the taskbar, I right-click and Pin, but it is the original yellow-folder icon that appears.
I shutdown Explorer and click my new taskbar icon, and while Explorer opens, I am NOT opened in T:\Maint.
Anyone can get this to work (a) opening in T:\Maint and (b) the changed icon appearing in the task bar gets an extra year added to their subscription at Eileen’s Lounge.

(5) Outstanding debris (down-pointing arrow)

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These two icons appear to be a part of Search which I think I don’t need as long as I have the search box. And an extra desktop. Most of the time I have NOTHING on my desktop because I like my random wallpaper selections from about 5,000 image files collected over the years.
Anyone fix this for me gets an extra year added to their subscription at Eileen’s Lounge.

I have no idea why my desktop has gone all-black. It was lovely images earlier today.
Sigh!

(LATER) In a brilliant move I have pinned SETTINGS to the task bar. Now I can really get into some sort of trouble!
Also CMD.EXE

Cheers, Chris

[JoeP]

@Chris,

Right-click on the Taskbar, and click on Taskbar Settings. In the Taskbar Items section turn off those you don't want to appear.

[ChrisGreaves]

@Chris,Right-click on the Taskbar, and click on Taskbar Settings. In the Taskbar Items section turn off those you don't want to appear.

Thanks Joe.
Sort of.

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This is what hovering does for me. I suspect that the first icon is "Happy Holidays"
Nothing in the r/c taskbar settings hints at New Desktop, but a Google search led me to "Task View" which happened to be turned ON; I turned it OFF and the multiple desktops icon disappeared.
I turned off Microsoft teams (click on the drop-down for "other System Tray Icons") but I will still be disgruntled when the next holiday comes along.

For what its worth, at this point I am not denying that if I use multiple desktops, have happy holidays etc etc I will gain great riches. MSoft's new features might be useful to me [he wrote skeptically].
But today I am interested in regaining the use of the task bar territory to let me work as efficiently as I was able to in Win7 and Win10.

Anyway, thanks again for holding my hand.
Cheers, Chris

[HansV]

You can specify if and how you want to display the search box in the Taskbar:
- Right-click an empty part of the Taskbar.
- Select Taskbar Settings from the context menu.
- You have four options for Search:

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As I wrote elsewhere: I hide the search box altogether. If I want to search, I click the Start button or press the Windows key and start typing. Search results will be updated while I type.

[ChrisGreaves]

You can specify if and how you want to display the search box in the Taskbar: ...
As I wrote elsewhere: I hide the search box altogether. ...

Thank you Hans.
I was about to post an image (attached) showing that I could get rid of the "african huts/cupcakes" by clicking in the search box (my yellow box), but if course that just dismissed the icon for the current search.

My initial confusion came about because I saw the "huts" as the leftmost of a set of annoying icons rather than part of the search box.

So I tried "Search box only" and still had the icons.
Issued restart and still had the icons.
I then used "Hide" and it has GONE! and now I have a bit more real estate.

Curious: Which edition of Win11 have you? I guess it isn't "Home"
Thanks again, Chris

[HansV]

I have Windows 11 Home, version 22H2.

[ChrisGreaves]

I plough ahead ...
Today's task was to get my nightly backup task (SYNC2023_03.bat) pinned to the task bar.

I came across this little gem: "22H2 has removed the ability to pin everything to the taskbar, but you can rename it to .exe and once pinned, you can rename it back."

It works.

So much for Windows security ...

I shall drift off to sleep tonight trying not to think about how one could write a simple but very evil batch file and ...

What's nice about this is that I can continue to tweak my batch file with right-click Edit and leave the pinned shortcut (BAT to EXE to BAT) in place.
Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

I need help with File Explorer which I use as a shortcut whose Properties read

Code: Select all

C:\Windows\explorer.exe /e,T:\maint

A week later, I try again. I do sometimes do something wrong when I am tired.
The article How to Pin Almost Anything to the Windows 11 Taskbar suggests opening the application, and when the icon appears in the taskbar, right-click and choose Pint To Taskbar.

A bit of experimentation suggests that simply dragging the shortcut by the icon to the taskbar lodges it AND causes the taskbar icon to recognize those parameters /e,T:\maint

This technique may work on other cases where a simple right-click and Pin fails.
(later) It works for my Finance,bat file that used to run well from Win7/win10 taskbars. I now create a shortcut to the batch file, paste the shortcut on the desktop, and then drag the shortcut to the taskbar. That taskbar icon now executes the batch file:-

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C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c T:\BATLap\Finance.bat

My nightly/weekly backup batch file does NOT follow this technique. The shortcut properties are shown here:-

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T:\BATLap\Sync2023_03.bat

I may need to use the old "cmd.exe /c" trick,... yes it does, but it seems to require the FullPath rather than just the cmd.exe. That may be because my environment variables do not include "C:\Windows\System32\"

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C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c T:\BATLap\Sync2023_03.bat

Then I found that, on the shortcut, right-click, (show more options) Pin To Taskbar worked just fine for my Re-boot.bat and Shutdown.bat.
here is a recent version of the taskbar, Win7/10:-

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here is this morning's version Win11:-

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Cheers, Chris