Solved Expanding Icons on Taskbar

6391mb · Nov 29, 2021

Not sure if this is in the correct section so please would the Admins move if incorrect.

Using both 10 and 11 and haven't noticed any difference in performance at this stage. I know beauty is in the...... but my one annoyance with 11 is unlike 10, the taskbar icons do not expand when a program is running in the background. I know there's a 'faint' line below a running program but it's just not, in my opinion, as convenient.

Is there a setting that I'm missing somewhere or a quick regedit that can be done to get those icons to expand.

The-Hive · Nov 29, 2021

That's one of the differences in 11, the taskbar is the main visual difference along with the context menu. there are a few tweaks about to change their behaviour.

6391mb · Nov 29, 2021

The-Hive said:
That's one of the differences in 11, the taskbar is the main visual difference along with the context menu. there are a few tweaks about to change their behaviour.

No problem here with the context menu. If/when I have FF open then the taskbar icon is highlighted but nothing else which may be running in the background. Why other programs that are running cannot remain highlighted I suppose is just down the the UI design and MS of course know best.

The-Hive · Nov 29, 2021

The new style taskbar was one of the big selling points of Win 11

glasskuter · Nov 29, 2021

I'm not sure exactly what you are wanting but maybe it's taskview. You can enable it by right clicking on taskbar-taskbar settings. If that's not what you are trying to accomplish, just toggle it back off.

6391mb · Nov 29, 2021

Thanks for your input. What I'm looking for is an at a glance what programs are already open as per Win10 which automatically expands the icon as per my original jpg posted. That facility is not available as far as I can tell in taskbar settings.

Currently only FF is highlighted in the taskbar but running in the background is Thunderbird, Task Manager and HW Monitor. In Win10 these icons would be elongated but in 11 only the program on the screen is highlighted which rather defeats any purpose especially as it's right in front of you.

It's probably not a deal breaker to bomb me back to 10 but more of an annoyance. But as many have remarked, a UI, any UI is all personal preference.

Maybe a third party program like WinAero may offer the facility in the future but I prefer not to introduce others to the party.

glasskuter · Nov 29, 2021

On my taskbar I have 4 programs open- File explorer, Cmd, and Firefox, snipping tool. Snipping Tool was my active window. It has a colored line in under it. The other three have smaller lines in under it of a lighter color.

glasskuter · Nov 29, 2021

It may be because your taskbar settings do NOT include "show badges". Taskbar settings- taskbar behavior-toggle show badges
If that's not it, you might try making a new user account. Name it TEST or Something. If the active lines show under the new user, then it narrows it down to either one of the taskbar settings or a corrupted user account.

6391mb · Nov 30, 2021

Reporting in - managed to get the expanding icons on the taskbar for programs running in the background compliments of Winaero plus a small addition via regedit. This moved the icons to the left so like Win10.

After this 'exercise', the Snippet tool no longer works as intended. So I'll either go back to the standard 11 UI or revert to 10.

FDretired · Nov 30, 2021

6391mb said:
Thanks for your input. What I'm looking for is an at a glance what programs are already open as per Win10 which automatically expands the icon as per my original jpg posted. That facility is not available as far as I can tell in taskbar settings.

Currently only FF is highlighted in the taskbar but running in the background is Thunderbird, Task Manager and HW Monitor. In Win10 these icons would be elongated but in 11 only the program on the screen is highlighted which rather defeats any purpose especially as it's right in front of you.

It's probably not a deal breaker to bomb me back to 10 but more of an annoyance. But as many have remarked, a UI, any UI is all personal preference.

Maybe a third party program like WinAero may offer the facility in the future but I prefer not to introduce others to the party.

With windows 10 I always had task bar setting " do not combine" and disabled "task view." I missed seeing all the icons on open programs in Win 11 I enabled task view and this is a good substitute for seeing multiple icons in the task bar.

The attached image is task view in action!

hdmi · Nov 30, 2021

Expanded icons convolute the taskbar when there are many, so I never used that option. But I do 100% agree that the lines below the icons are inadequate when the goal is to be able to see at a glance which icons are the ones that represent (an) open window(s). If you have like 15-20 icons pinned to taskbar, you get "icon chaos", or unnecessary stress from not being able to stay focussed during those moments when more than 5 icons have a line under them, as the Window Switcher or Task View is an extra step that switches your view to it, always, i.e., even in situations when there should be no reason for this in any way whatsoever. So, what I ended up doing was I decided not to pin anything to my taskbar excepting only File Explorer. To still be able to launch shortcuts from the taskbar with just a single mouseclick, I use the taskbar feature known as Taskbar Toolbars. But this feature is gone in Windows 11, so this is one of several reasons why I required (!) the old taskbar from Windows 10 back, and why I use ExplorerPatcher from GitHub. Personal preferences have got nothing to do with it. There's good UI design and there's bad. A counterproductive UI is the worst kind, and so it doesn't factually matter what everybody else thinks. Companies like Microsoft should understand the simple fact that time is money, and should do so without needing to draw them a picture. The sad part is, you could draw them 100 pictures and then they STILL won't figure it out... which I can prove.

6391mb · Dec 1, 2021

hdmi said:
Expanded icons convolute the taskbar when there are many, so I never used that option. But I do 100% agree that the lines below the icons are inadequate when the goal is to be able to see at a glance which icons are the ones that represent (an) open window(s). If you have like 15-20 icons pinned to taskbar, you get "icon chaos", or unnecessary stress from not being able to stay focussed during those moments when more than 5 icons have a line under them, as the Window Switcher or Task View is an extra step that switches your view to it, always, i.e., even in situations when there should be no reason for this in any way whatsoever. So, what I ended up doing was I decided not to pin anything to my taskbar excepting only File Explorer. To still be able to launch shortcuts from the taskbar with just a single mouseclick, I use the taskbar feature known as Taskbar Toolbars. But this feature is gone in Windows 11, so this is one of several reasons why I required (!) the old taskbar from Windows 10 back, and why I use ExplorerPatcher from GitHub. Personal preferences have got nothing to do with it. There's good UI design and there's bad. A counterproductive UI is the worst kind, and so it doesn't factually matter what everybody else thinks. Companies like Microsoft should understand the simple fact that time is money, and should do so without needing to draw them a picture. The sad part is, you could draw them 100 pictures and then they STILL won't figure it out... which I can prove.

I do not have many icons pinned on the taskbar as prefer not to have clutter - plus with OpenShell not necessary in my case. So unpinned Edge, Mail, Store, etc. I would though prefer to see an elongated icon for running programs. Not sure why MS decided on the line rather than allow the whole icon to be dimmed/illuminated when a program is running in the background. I don't really see the point of only the FF icon 'highlighted' when I'm using that program to bash out a reply and it's right in front of me full screen.

Winaero did semi work but the registry hack suggestion broke something else so possibly in their next release...... or maybe MS will allow the facility in their next update.

Anyway. decided to go back to 10 for now with my main rig and allow 11 to remain on the laptop. All depends on what you use your PC/Laptop/Tablet for but in my case, at the moment I find 10 to be more productive. No increases (or decreases) in performance so really no point in keeping 11 for now. I'll keep an eye on the updates to see if/when the UI gradually evolves but I'm not holding my breath.

As an aside - it appears I'm not a line voice in this. On the techcommunity.microsoft.com forum, others are asking for the 'never combine toolbars' function to be reinstated and 11 is a deal breaker for many based on this alone. Link here

FDretired · Dec 1, 2021

6391mb said:
Not sure why MS decided on the line rather than allow the whole icon to be dimmed/illuminated when a program is running in the background.

Ubuntu has a line next to open programs. I do get an impression that there are many ideas from Linux in the new Windows 11 interface.

hdmi · Dec 1, 2021

@6391mb
I have a very strong doubt that Winearo tweaker will do that in a foreseeable future, and, what's the point of waiting on Winaero when 1/ you can already do that RIGHT NOW with the free ExplorerPatcher or 2/ you can just stick to Windows 10 and forget about Windows 11 for now, but either way you still don't have any guarantees that Microsoft will fix Windows 11 annoyances and shortcomings. Or maybe they might fix it in such a way that the result will still be a bit of a letdown. If ExplorerPatcher breaks, it breaks. I only hope that it won't. I mean, I don't usually tend to complain about the quality of the lifeboat when, clearly, the ship is sinking. That's my main philosophy. I don't play games, but in some areas at least, Windows 11 has more than 10% better performance than Windows 10. I can still go back to Windows 10 if ExplorerPatcher breaks before someone has a better solution. Until then, it's just not worth fretting over. It's a solution that works, for now it does, which is still a whole lot better than waiting for another solution that either might work or might not work. Excepting of course if Windows 11 truly adds nothing for you. For me, it does. (If only just a little bit.)

AndreTen · Dec 1, 2021

I'm with @hdmi on this. ExplorerPatcher take care of missing stuff on Taskbar, plus get back calendar with agenda. I don't mess with Explorer toolbar or context menus.., although EP can bring back the Win 10 behavior

Release 22000.348.39.1 · valinet/ExplorerPatcher

Tested on build 22000.348. New features Built-in support for build 22000.348. Implemented option to toggle taskbar auto-hide when double clicking the main taskbar (#389) Running ep_setup.exe again...

github.com

6391mb · Dec 1, 2021

Reporting back in (again) - tried ExplorerPatcher and it works fine. So my thanks to @hdmi for the suggestion.

It's at times like this I'd like to look (although maybe not) into the minds of the developers that in their infinite wisdom decided to remove this option from 11. Hmmmmm...............

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