Auto-Hide Taskbar doesn't work properly

Is it me, or is the "Auto-hide taskbar" feature a little wanky?
It sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, sometimes it gets stuck and you just can't seem to get rid of it, etc.

Mine has a problem as well and has since mid summer. In my case, at times the taskbar will hide and won't un-hide. At other times I can't get it to hide. Some times it will start working on its own, but I usually restart explorer using a shortcut key and it works immediately. I don't show any file corruption but plan to do a repair install. Just haven't gotten around to doing it as right now it only a minor inconvenience every once in a while.

I just got a pop up saying something about a side toolbar I think, and I can only have one toolbar hidden at a time or something.

Then it seemed to uncheck my taskbar auto-hide box and I had to recheck it.

What the heck was that all about? lol

Without more info on complete message you got I'm just guessing but it may be this.

Ooooh....I saw something like that a couple of times in Edge I think and closed it. It's that ChatGPT thing which I guess they are trying to force us to use on the Desktop now? God I hate that thing. Now it has something like "Creative" setting to help make an excuse for all the mistakes it makes. *rollseyes*

The co-pilot side pane for Edge is seen when you open co-pilot chat from within Edge. (The funny blue icon to the right of the three dots in Edge.) This side pane is closed from within Edge by hitting its X close icon.

The side pane referenced above is the co-pilot side pane for the pre-release version of co-pilot within Windows itself. It's a little icon that attaches to your taskbar just to the right of your search. If you do not unpin it, it shows all the time and uses valuable screen space.

This section in the documentation of ExplorerPatcher gives an overview of what can be possible to achieve with the taskbar: All features
Note: doubleclick on the taskbar toggles the taskbar's autohide.

Choosing to use the Windows 10 style for the taskbar like shown in my example screenshot above also solves a whole plethora of other problems with the taskbar (and notification area thereof) in Windows 11. In fact I have a fairly long list of these problems, but some people will insist that ExplorerPatcher causes more problems. What little problems I have found with ExplorerPatcher over the past 2 years and 2 months either were not impactful enough to waste time trying to describe them again here or were such an easy fix that a part of me wanted to start making another list... of Flat Earthers.