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More Options for Organizing Your Taskbar

Article posted on 4/5/2022

A couple of weeks back, we shipped the first public beta of Start11 v1.2, which enables a new feature for “ungrouping” the icons on your taskbar. While this feature looks familiar from previous versions of Windows, it’s actually an all-new taskbar that we built in-house in order to enable the functionality.

The challenge of building a taskbar from scratch is immense! There are endless scenarios that Microsoft has accounted for during the past couple of decades with its own taskbar experience. For Stardock to rebuild a taskbar that covers the many extensive experiences offered by Windows, well, to call it "challenging" is a bit of an understatement.

Now that we can control what is happening on the most important part of the Windows interface, we can implement unique experiences. One such example that will be included when we release the final version of Start 11 v1.2 is the removal of labels from ungrouped taskbar windows.

This feature inclusion was implemented after it was requested by a user in our forums and will be an optional feature with Start 11 v1.2.

The feature is a middle-ground for users with multiple iterations of the same app being opened (such as a browser or Word docs), but who prefer a compact view of their taskbar windows. While this option may not be for everyone, those who prefer to see each window open but not have their entire taskbar populated with unnecessary text, will find this feature very much to their liking.

It’s this type of feature that highlights what Stardock does best. Not only did we re-enable a feature from previous versions of Windows, but we also made it better. As we continue to work on new features for the taskbar, let us know what else you would like to see.