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Taskbar on side in Win11?

HangTime

HangTime

HangTime

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Got an annoying problem with Windows11, I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the taskbar on the left side of the screen. Tried checking it's not locked, dragging it, going into taskbar settings etc. There is a position setting you can set to left but all it does is put the icons on the left side of the taskbar, not actually move the taskbar to the left side.

Any ideas how to fix this?
 
As in vertical taskbar? AFAIK isn't currently supported in Windows 11.

There was an entry about it on the feedback hub and MS basically, though not in so many words, said not enough people use it like that so they aren't worth bothering about.........
 
Surely it can't be that hard to implement though?
Taskbar at the bottom just seems illogical to me now most monitors are widescreen, you have loads of horizontal real estate relative to vertical so why on earth would you want to use up space at the bottom of the screen? Especially given websites, documents etc tend to flow downwards. It also consumes more pixels at the bottom of the screen compared to the side so you get to see less of your actual applications.
 
HangTime said:
Got an annoying problem with Windows11, I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the taskbar on the left side of the screen. Tried checking it's not locked, dragging it, going into taskbar settings etc. There is a position setting you can set to left but all it does is put the icons on the left side of the taskbar, not actually move the taskbar to the left side.

Any ideas how to fix this?
Click to expand...


03 Top taskbar worked fine
02 Right taskbar broken with keyboard language and no icons
01 Bottom taskbar (default)
00 Left taskbar broken with keyboard language and no icons

I tried all above and preferred bottom taskbar. I dont know why on earth few people like left or right taskbar it looked horrible mess on Windows 10 with tiny horizontal scroll bar to find icons and action center slide over right taskbar looked terrible so it looked much better and nice on bottom taskbar.
 
Tiny scroll bar is only an issue if you have a lot of different applications open simultaneously and/or have a lower resolution monitor. I can understand how people who have huge numbers of pinned/open applications might prefer a horizontal taskbar but I don't tend to that and bar at the bottom just wastes loads of space and shrinks the amount of vertical space.
 
AthlonXP1800 said:
I tried all above and preferred bottom taskbar. I dont know why on earth few people like left or right taskbar it looked horrible mess on Windows 10 with tiny horizontal scroll bar to find icons and action center slide over right taskbar looked terrible so it looked much better and nice on bottom taskbar.
Click to expand...

If you have an ultra wide monitor then left or right makes sense and is quite logical. Saves also having a super wide taskbar. App icons are also then readily available in a convenient place top left area of the screen which feels more natural. I sit slightly left to the middle of the screen anyway on a 34" ultra wide so this feels the best location and never have I seen a scroll bar on the taskbar. With 12 apps open I still have room for another 10 or so on the taskbar for example.
 
Installing the update doesn't make it instantly available for everyone. As per usual it's staggered and you may require vivetool to unlock it. It's all bit of a joke tbh. :/
 
Do you know if the update will still be staggered after the patch Tuesday release? I'm in no rush to customise my taskbar but would be nice to have a play.
I do miss the vertical taskbar but on an ultrawide it's a long way to move the cursor.

I already have 1552 useable vertical pixels, but every pixel counts :)
 
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marc2003 said:
Installing the update doesn't make it instantly available for everyone. As per usual it's staggered and you may require vivetool to unlock it. It's all bit of a joke tbh. :/
Click to expand...
No it did not required vivetool to unlock it. New taskbar position is now appeared in Settings>Personalisation>Taskbar>Taskbar behaviours.
 
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Mujja said:
Do you know if the update will still be staggered after the patch Tuesday release? I'm in no rush to customise my taskbar but would be nice to have a play.
I do miss the vertical taskbar but on an ultrawide it's a long way to move the cursor.

I already have 1552 useable vertical pixels, but every pixel counts :)
Click to expand...
Yes it will be staggered in September patch Tuesday release.
 
If you spend most of your desktop time in a browser, and using Firefox, there's a setting so some of the toolbars and menu bars are vertical.

edit, like this

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Mujja said:
Do you know if the update will still be staggered after the patch Tuesday release? I'm in no rush to customise my taskbar but would be nice to have a play.
I do miss the vertical taskbar but on an ultrawide it's a long way to move the cursor.

I already have 1552 useable vertical pixels, but every pixel counts :)
Click to expand...
sometimes features are already there in staggered deployment
just not been enabled for everyone
I usually try and enable using vivetool
would be install vivetool to the root of C drive
then cd/change directory to the vivetool location using cmd
and run vivetool /enable /id:59213768 command
if it's there but not enabled you should now have
new taskbar locations available
running vivetool /enable /id:61090762 too will also give
small taskbar option
 
Pawnless Endgame said:
I fail to understand why MS got rid of it and why did it take a few years to reinstate it.
Click to expand...

They didn't exactly get rid of it - Windows 11 is a bit like Oblivion Remaster in that it runs a legacy UI under the hood which lacks a lot of features like movable taskbars and then has the Windows 11 UI slapped on top - they've half-arsed a movable taskbar implementation in.

Sometimes if you break Windows 11 badly enough you'll get something which looks like a very basic version of Windows XP being rendered instead :s
 
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