Five years later, Windows 11 brings back much-missed taskbar options (and more)
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
We moved the Taskbar finally!
Yay!
It only kinda-sorta-works!
Boo!
There is just NO pleasing you people is there?!
Yay!
It only kinda-sorta-works!
Boo!
There is just NO pleasing you people is there?!
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Thank goodness I'll be able to get rid of that bullshit recommended section in the Start menu, what a waste of space. The other thing they need to fix is to stop truncating the names of applications with "..." if it's "too long" because if there's a place we should always see the full name of an application it's the darn start menu!
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Not being able to put the taskbar on the side in an era of wide-screen and ultra-widescreen monitors is honestly one of the most ridiculous things this company has ever done, and shows the total lack of care wrt Windows. They could afford to have 200 people working full-time on the taskbar and it would be a rounding error in their financials.
Apple also dropped the ball on Tahoe, it's not been a vintage set of desktop releases. At least Ubuntu continues to slowly improve and whittle down the millions of rough edges.
Apple also dropped the ball on Tahoe, it's not been a vintage set of desktop releases. At least Ubuntu continues to slowly improve and whittle down the millions of rough edges.
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Finally, the single part of Windows11 that I hate most is being fixed. Give me my glorious top task bar back.
(I’m only, like, 50% joking. At work, where I have no choice in OS, losing my top task bar was my biggest gripe with 11.)
(I’m only, like, 50% joking. At work, where I have no choice in OS, losing my top task bar was my biggest gripe with 11.)
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Not having this old functionality on day 1 caused me to purchase Start11. With like 4 years of improvements (aka giving us back lost functionality), stock Win11 is at least usable now.
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When I was doing Sysadmin work more, I loved top task bar because it was a really quick way to make sure I was on my local desktop and not on a remote server. All the servers were of course default bottom taskbars so needing to go to the top for my local PC saved me more than once from making a stupid mistake.
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I rather hate the insistence on an online account more. Yes, you can jump through hoops if you know the proper hoop-jumping sequence but is that technically necessary?
Still, even after achieving a local account, microsoft are still petty enough to expire your password on a more regular basis than if you'd broken down and acquiesced to an online account.
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Am I miss remembering things but wasn't Microsoft excuse for not doing this in the past that it was hard to do yet now they've throw this out there pretty quickly? Maybe the hard part is in the stuff that isn't yet implemented?
I was never a side or top taskbar person so this never really bothered me personally but it did seem like such a silly little thing to leave for so long. Nothing says you don't care about your users in the slights like taking away a feature and then ignoring customer complaints about it for years. The setting per monitor would be interesting to see. I could see the saving settings per location being nice but also confusing if they don't make it obvious that is what is happening. I could see someone making a bunch of changes and then switching the location and getting confused/frustrated when all the changes they just made seem to get "lost".
I was never a side or top taskbar person so this never really bothered me personally but it did seem like such a silly little thing to leave for so long. Nothing says you don't care about your users in the slights like taking away a feature and then ignoring customer complaints about it for years. The setting per monitor would be interesting to see. I could see the saving settings per location being nice but also confusing if they don't make it obvious that is what is happening. I could see someone making a bunch of changes and then switching the location and getting confused/frustrated when all the changes they just made seem to get "lost".
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Straight from the Madden Football EA school of development! Take away features and then add them back, one by one, and pat yourselves on the back while you do it!
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ReadandShare
Ars Centurion
I would like using Windows more if Microsoft provides customization options to the greatest extent practicable. Want to introduce us to new apps or new ways of doing things? Sure, go ahead, add stuff in - BUT always give users the option of removing/turning off anything we don't want.
Remember CandyCrush? Yeah, the best way to annoy people and turn them off to your new stuff is to shove them in their faces and not allowing easy removal! Same same for OneDrive.
Remember CandyCrush? Yeah, the best way to annoy people and turn them off to your new stuff is to shove them in their faces and not allowing easy removal! Same same for OneDrive.
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And the third unforgivable was ending support for perfectly cromulant hardware and forcing an unnecessary wave of ewaste.
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OK, while we're addressing regressions, bring back the lightning fast local file search that Win 8 had. That was the best OS-level search I ever used. Now it's well behind MacOS Spotlight and Ubuntu's local search
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It wasn't that it was hard it was more that it was low priority in the project of writing the start menu new from scratch. It was "hard" in the sense of project scope. Still seems like something they should have prioritized higher, but it wasn't a technical hurdle but a resourcing and project planning one
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Imagine how surprised people 10-15 years ago would be by that statement given how Windows 8 was viewed as hot garbage in its day. Oh how the times have changed in hindsight
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I've been using StartAllBack more or less since the day I got Windows 11 and I now have literally no idea what the stock Windows 11 taskbar or start menu is supposed to look like.
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This is a welcome restoration of functionality. I am looking forward to them finishing and pushing to stable branches.
I hope they eventually allow us to disable Web Search in the taskbar. That is the other major regression I continually fight with. Preventing private searches for local documents from leaking to the web, is simply a must-have feature. Yet on Win 11 Pro there is no longer a supported way to do it! The recommended group policies and registry edits have ceased functioning in recent years. The only way to come close: update the DNS server (or hosts file) to repoint bing.com to a dead IP. Which works, but has side effects.
To the Windows team: Please restore the ability for the local search bar to search only local files. At the absolute barest of minimums, this feature needs to work for SMB/Professional edition. But Home users need privacy too.
I hope they eventually allow us to disable Web Search in the taskbar. That is the other major regression I continually fight with. Preventing private searches for local documents from leaking to the web, is simply a must-have feature. Yet on Win 11 Pro there is no longer a supported way to do it! The recommended group policies and registry edits have ceased functioning in recent years. The only way to come close: update the DNS server (or hosts file) to repoint bing.com to a dead IP. Which works, but has side effects.
To the Windows team: Please restore the ability for the local search bar to search only local files. At the absolute barest of minimums, this feature needs to work for SMB/Professional edition. But Home users need privacy too.
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Maybe next they can give us a non broken email and calendar applications that don't require funneling your email through Microsoft's exchange servers regardless of who the email provider is. Windows hasn't had a good email client out of the box since Vista (you had to install Live Essentials on 7) and it's bonkers as heck. Sure Apple has made updates to Mail and Calendar but they're also not fundamentally different from the original 10.0 versions and they've had management of connected accounts figured out for literal decades now, why can't Microsoft get this right?
Guess back to Thunderbird for me even though it doesn't do calendars without plugins on last experience
Guess back to Thunderbird for me even though it doesn't do calendars without plugins on last experience
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So what I'm hearing is that we've still not reached feature parity after 5 years.
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what about the Taskbar overflow crap, any improvement? I solved that by buying a Macbook for personal use, but still have to deal with it at work. Workaround is to calm down by reminding myself I'm paid per hour not per task done, but it's still annoying.
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Not far-fetched. A couple weeks ago, Microsoft added an unremovable Copilot icon to Excel that floats above the bottom right corner of the worksheet, actually covering cells. Every time you open an Excel file, the icon plays a little animation to draw attention to itself. Apparently it's in other Office apps as well.
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More of the big system builders need to start offering Linux as an option, period. Windows is an embarrassment and Microsoft is clearly being mismanaged from the top down. Linux and LibreOffice are viable alternatives. I hope European countries adopt Linux wholesale (I know a few are) so it speeds the transition away from this AI-filled nightmare.
I know it won't happen, but I would love to see Valve come out swinging with a $400 Steam Machine just to say "we're taking one for the team to speed the move away from Windows" I can dream, OK...
I know it won't happen, but I would love to see Valve come out swinging with a $400 Steam Machine just to say "we're taking one for the team to speed the move away from Windows" I can dream, OK...
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Makes one wonder what those thousands of programmers are doing on a daily basis.
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I've installed windows for the last time on my personal desktop.
The next time I have to install an OS, it'll be a mainstream Linux distribution like Ubuntu or opensuse, that supports gaming through Proton/Wine.
I'm getting too old to waste my time fighting the os, Windows sure want to annoy the user and continue to erode the little trust that's left.
The next time I have to install an OS, it'll be a mainstream Linux distribution like Ubuntu or opensuse, that supports gaming through Proton/Wine.
I'm getting too old to waste my time fighting the os, Windows sure want to annoy the user and continue to erode the little trust that's left.
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I use Windhawk nowadays with two mods to get the taskbar how I personally prefer it:
1) removes unused space to show desktop wallpaper instead
2) auto hides but only when a window is maximised
That, plus the registry change that disables Bing search in the start menu. (Something that should be a on/off toggle in a settings menu!)
1) removes unused space to show desktop wallpaper instead
2) auto hides but only when a window is maximised
That, plus the registry change that disables Bing search in the start menu. (Something that should be a on/off toggle in a settings menu!)
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But at least they're rethinking the mandatory Copilot hardware key on keyboards! By... maybe letting users remap it.
https://www.windowscentral.com/micr...ight-ctrl-or-context-menu-key-later-this-year
It's easy to dismiss the AI crap as Satya Nadella being an "AI True Believer" and leave it at that, but I think the more powerful explanatory mechanism is that Nadella is a dipshit. It explains stupid shit beyond their LLM obsession.
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Way too late, Microslop.
I switched over to MacOS for day-to-day computing about a year ago, and after the last major Windows update made me go through turning down all the subscription offers again, I switched to Bazzite for almost all my gaming needs. I am still keeping that Win11 install around on an old SATA SSD, but literally only for Battlefield and Rocksmith 2014 with RSASIO. I could probably get that latter one working if I went with CachyOS and got really into the pipewire weeds, but that's way more work than I want to spend on what's basically a glorified console at this point.
I switched over to MacOS for day-to-day computing about a year ago, and after the last major Windows update made me go through turning down all the subscription offers again, I switched to Bazzite for almost all my gaming needs. I am still keeping that Win11 install around on an old SATA SSD, but literally only for Battlefield and Rocksmith 2014 with RSASIO. I could probably get that latter one working if I went with CachyOS and got really into the pipewire weeds, but that's way more work than I want to spend on what's basically a glorified console at this point.
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No joke, this might finally get me to move off of Win10. I've gone to Mac at work and a home laptop, but I still have a Win10 PC I use for gaming/photo editing and not having a left side taskbar is so annoying that I've refused to switch out of spite.
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Honestly, after living with the taskbar on the right, that was one of the main issues preventing me from updating to Win11. Now, when it's in the live version, I'll probably finally make the jump.
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I loved Win8. I realise I’m in a small minority but i think it was the best Windows version ever. Still miss it.
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