VIVETOOL, and how to use it...

xlr8tx · Apr 24, 2023

@ Ghot

I appreciate your proactiveness and your desire to help. I'm glad there are people like you around to guide others with less knowledge on such matters. But honestly, IMO (and you may think I'm a simpleton) it is just not worth it for a cool looking taskbar. I like apps and tools that you just click and voilà; they actually work.

FrancoDT · Apr 24, 2023

xlr8tx said:
@ Ghot

I appreciate your proactiveness and your desire to help. I'm glad there are people like you around to guide others with less knowledge on such matters. But honestly, IMO (and you may think I'm a simpleton) it is just not worth it for a cool looking taskbar. I like apps and tools that you just click and voilà; they actually work.

Agree, MS keeps making it more difficult for 3rd party customizations to run on this operating system. I was using the Vivetool workaround but now even that won't work on the beta builds as setting it to disabled automictically resets to enabled on the reboot so I'm living without Translucent Taskbar now.

OAT · Apr 24, 2023

FrancoDT said:
I'm living without Translucent Taskbar now.

How do you manage my poor friend?

PS: It is a well-intentioned joke, I hope it made you smile, if not I am sorry.

FrancoDT · Apr 24, 2023

OAT said:
How do you manage my poor friend?

PS: It is a well-intentioned joke, I hope it made you smile, if not I am sorry.

LOL, Well I compensate for the ugly taskbar with various changing wallpapers and my desktop rainmeter skins.

xlr8tx · Apr 24, 2023

FrancoDT said:
LOL, Well I compensate for the ugly taskbar with various changing wallpapers and my desktop rainmeter skins.

Right on, I have mine on auto-hide so I don't have to see that ugly thing as much.

Speaking of Rainmeter, has anyone tried the Translucent Taskbar on there?

Translucent Taskbar Rainmeter Skin

How cool your PC will look if you apply a translucent taskbar to customize the homepage? It would certainly look amazing because only a few...

visualskins.com

FrancoDT · Apr 24, 2023

xlr8tx said:
Speaking of Rainmeter, has anyone tried the Translucent Taskbar on there?

I gave it a try but can't get it to do anything even set to 100% transparent.

bob3d · Apr 25, 2023

xlr8tx said:
Right on, I have mine on auto-hide so I don't have to see that ugly thing as much.

Speaking of Rainmeter, has anyone tried the Translucent Taskbar on there?

Translucent Taskbar Rainmeter Skin

How cool your PC will look if you apply a translucent taskbar to customize the homepage? It would certainly look amazing because only a few...

visualskins.com

I use Translucent Taskbar on both my Windows 11 and Windows 10 machines. It works on my machines without any trouble other than telling it to run at startup.

bob

FrancoDT · Apr 25, 2023

bob3d said:
I use Translucent Taskbar on both my Windows 11 and Windows 10 machines. It works on my machines without any trouble other than telling it to run at startup.

bob

I can still run it on my 22621.1631 build machine using the Vivetool workaround but on the machine with the last few beta builds I can't run it at all now. Hopefully a new Translucent TB build is in the works for the newer Win 11 versions.

bob3d · Apr 25, 2023

FrancoDT said:
I can still run it on my 22621.1631 build machine using the Vivetool workaround but on the machine with the last few beta builds I can't run it at all now. Hopefully a new Translucent TB build is in the works for the newer Win 11 versions.

I have TTB working correctly on the latest Canary build on Windows 11 (build #25346). No software gymnastics at all. I just have it run at startup after a 5-second delay.

bob

FrancoDT · Apr 25, 2023

bob3d said:
I have TTB working correctly on the latest Canary build on Windows 11 (build #25346). No software gymnastics at all. I just have it run at startup after a 5-second delay.

bob

hmmm, maybe a good sign that the future Windows builds will be compatible with it then.

johnlgalt · Apr 27, 2023

xlr8tx said:
@ Ghot

I appreciate your proactiveness and your desire to help. I'm glad there are people like you around to guide others with less knowledge on such matters. But honestly, IMO (and you may think I'm a simpleton) it is just not worth it for a cool looking taskbar. I like apps and tools that you just click and voilà; they actually work.

FrancoDT said:
Agree, MS keeps making it more difficult for 3rd party customizations to run on this operating system. I was using the Vivetool workaround but now even that won't work on the beta builds as setting it to disabled automictically resets to enabled on the reboot so I'm living without Translucent Taskbar now.

I disagree with the sentiment that Microsoft is doing this on purpose. They did not make it intentionally harder for customization tools, they started (or continued, really) re-writing the task bar to get some of the old functionality that it had in Windows 10.

Like, for example, being able to run Task Manager from the task bar directly.

It's always been a work in progress since Windows 11 release, and developers will have to adapt (or users will have to find workarounds) until Microsoft gets it back to where they want it to be.

I added the fix in ViveTool once and it has worked since except for one small hiccup, which required an additional fix. The original fix was still enabled after all that time.

Software changes - what works today may not work tomorrow, and anyone who customizes their UI will tell you that that is their biggest challenge. Always has been and always will be.

Remember when XP kept updating the files that would get patched to allow for customized themes on it so you had to run the patcher over and over again, especially after an SP update?

Yeah. This is nothing new.

FrancoDT · Apr 27, 2023

johnlgalt said:
I disagree with the sentiment that Microsoft is doing this on purpose. They did not make it intentionally harder for customization tools, they started (or continued, really) re-writing the task bar to get some of the old functionality that it had in Windows 10.

I'm not saying their doing it intentionally just that all the constant tweaking and changes MS does now cause a lot of compatibility problems for 3rd party software developers to try to keep up with. One of the reasons I keep my desktop tweaking pretty simple now. The Translucent TB and Rainmeter are about it for me.

johnlgalt · Apr 27, 2023

Lol. Sorry, I'll take improvements like Task Manager from the taskbar, and other stuff, over it being the same as when it launched.

Pretty sure Microsoft has a much larger user base to make happy than most of these 3rd party developers do.

FrancoDT · Apr 27, 2023

johnlgalt said:
Lol. Sorry, I'll take improvements like Task Manager from the taskbar, and other stuff, over it being the same as when it launched.

Pretty sure Microsoft has a much larger user base to make happy than most of these 3rd party developers do.

Agree, and most of us look forward to playing with whatever new MS tweaks they come out with. Once they came out with dark themes I was happy and gave up on all the Stardock programs like Windowblinds as dark mode was all I wanted from the beginning.

careylui · Apr 29, 2023

Same method can not work in 22621.1635 version now!

FrancoDT · Apr 29, 2023

careylui said:
Same method can not work in 22621.1635 version now!

The Vivetool workaround will still work on my 22621.1635 build but on my beta builds the STTest id:26008830 will not stay disabled and re-enables on the reboot. Is that the same problem your getting on your 1635 build now?

Ghot · Apr 29, 2023

Still works for me on 22621.1635, even after reboot.

careylui · Apr 29, 2023

FrancoDT said:
The Vivetool workaround will still work on my 22621.1635 build but on my beta builds the STTest id:26008830 will not stay disabled and re-enables on the reboot. Is that the same problem your getting on your 1635 build now?

It works now!I don't why?Just do the same thing again and reboot.Work in 22621.1635 now!No problems!