The taskbar is one of the cornerstones of the Windows UI, and has been for decades, with relatively small changes made throughout the years. Some changes can be for the better, and some are for the worse, but ultimately, the taskbar isn't perfect, and if you want to make the most of your Windows 11 PC, you might need to make some changes to it.

Through both built-in options and third-party apps, there are a few things you can do to make your taskbar work better for you, and the best part is you don't even need to spend any money if you don't want to. Most of the changes listed here can be done for free.

7 Disable the icons you don't need

It takes up a lot of space

Out of the box, the Windows 11 taskbar has a lot of icons that don't have much use for a lot of people. Of course, the Start menu is there and it's justified, but when we get to things like Task View, Widgets, and the search bar, it's not for everyone, and it can just be wasting space considering all these features can be accessed in other ways.

Search is available from within the Start menu and takes the exact same amount of effort to launch, so the search bar is a big waste of space, and Task View is probably much for convenient to use with the Windows + Tab keyuboard shortcut.

Thankfully, all you need to do is right-click the taskbar and choose Taskbar settings, and from there you can disable the built-in icons. You can use that space to pin more of your favorite apps, or simply have more space for your open windows.

6 Disable taskbar grouping

See all your windows more easily

Windows 11 groups all the windows for a given app under the same icon, which saves space on your taskbar, but requires extra clicks and time to switch to the right window if you have a lot of them open. It can be very time consuming and frustrating, but thankfully, you can disable this grouping and make it so that every window shows up individually on the taskbar with the appropriate label.

This is easily done by right-clicking the taskbar and choosing Taskbar settings, and you can then find these options under Taskbar behaviors. Try it and see if it helps speed things up for you.

5 Customize label sizes

Windhawk to the rescue

Taskbar grouping may be customizable within Windows itself, but that's nothing compared to what's offered with an app like Windhawk, and even for something like this, Windhawk can greatly expand on the capabilities of Windows.

One of the many interesting mods in Windhawk is called Taskbar Labels for Windows 11 (with the identifier taskbar-labels), and it lets you change a ton about these labels. You can choose the maximum width of taskbar items, so a name will get trimmed if it doesn't fit in that space, you can set the minimum width, and you can go as far as changing the text size of the labels for the taskbar icons, so you can make this text easier to read. You can even remove padding around the icon and label to make more efficient use of the available space.

• 4 reasons you should use Windhawk instead of Start11 to customize your PC

  Why spend money at all?

• Windhawk

  See at Windhawk

4 Enable volume control on the taskbar

Easier and faster

Changing the volume on your Windows PC isn't exactly hard, but it can require a couple of extra clicks that waste a bit of time. Something you may not know is that you can actually use the scroll wheel over the volume icon on the taskbar to adjust the volume without having to open the quick actions menu, but that still means scrolling over a very specific area of the screen.

Windhawk can enhance this too, thanks to a mod called Taskbar Volume Control (with the identifier taskbar-volume-control). This is a fairly simple mod that simply allows you to extend the acionable area of the taskbar for volume control to basically take up the entire taskbar. What that means is that you just need to move your mouse over any area of the taskbar and scroll the scroll wheel to adjust the volume. It makes things that much easier, and it can save you little bits of time here and there throughout the day.

3 Change what middle-clicking an app does

Close apps instead of opening them

You know how in a web browser, middle-clicking a tab will close it? Well, the taskbar in Windows 11 is a bit different, and middle-clicking an app on the taskbar actually opens a new instance of that app. But thanks to WIindhawk, you can change that to be similar to how things work in a web browser.

For that, there's a mod aptly called Middle click to close on the taskbar (with the identifier taskbar-button-click), which enables this exact feature. You can make it so that middle-clicking automatically closes all window for an app, or only the foreground window, and you can also tweak the settings so that you have to hold down a key while clicking in order to close the app. It's fairly simple, but it can definitely help.

2 Move the taskbar anywhere

Why stick to the bottom of the screen?

The final tip you can follow free of charge is move the taskbar to any edge of the screen, rather than the bottom of it. Windhawk offers a couple of mods for this: Vertical Taskbar for Windows 11 (identifier taskbar-vertical) and Taskbar on top for Windows 11 (identifier taskbar-on-top). These are both fairly self-explanatory, and they let you move the Windows 11 taskbar to any edge of your screen so you can reach it more easily.

There are other free tools that can do this, though, such as ExplorerPatcher, though that one fullly reverses the taskbar to behave like the Windows 10 one, so it's a bit different in its implementation. Some paid solution like Start11 also let you move the taskbar.

1 Turn it into a file navigation tool

Start11 is a powerhouse

Finally, we do have one time that would cost you money because it requires Start11. This is one of the best Windows customization tools out there, and one of the coolest features about it is the ability to pin folder menus to the taskbar. This means that not only are your folders available directly on the taskbar, but you can browse them directly from there, without having to open File Explorer.

This is a game-changing feature that makes it way easier to get to important files more quickly, and it can save you a ton of time in the long run. Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Start11, so you may want to check out our review to learn more about that.

• Stardock Start11 v2

  OS

  Windows 11/10

  $10 at Stardock

Make the taskbar work better for you

You may not think of the taskbar as something that can be heavily customized and made to behave the way you want, but there's quite a bit you can do to make the taskbar better for productivity. Whether you need to move things around or add file navigation straight to the taskbar, there are certainly things you can do to make it better. Check out the apps above to see how these changes can make your experience better, and you might just love them.