The Taskbar has emerged as the poster child for everything that is wrong with Windows 11. But is it really that bad?
Why, yes. Yes, it is.
The Taskbar first appeared in Windows 95, and at that time Microsoft positioned this UI as being similar to the channel buttons on a television, where the user could select the app they wanted and switch to it. Over time, the Taskbar was enhanced in each new version of Windows, with perhaps the biggest change coming in 2009, in Windows 7, when Microsoft commingled app launching shortcuts with those for running apps.
Unfortunately, Windows 11 brought the biggest set of functional regressions related to the Taskbar since this interface first debuted. It is no longer possible to position the Taskbar on any side of the display. It no longer supports toolbars. You cannot right-click default Microsoft items to remove them, as was possible in Windows 10. You can no longer resize the Taskbar. You cannot drag files to an app shortcut and open them in the underlying app. And when you right-click the Taskbar, only a single item—“Taskbar settings”—appears in the resulting context menu; the Windows 10 Taskbar had many, many items in this menu, including quick access to Task Manager. And there are probably others I’m forgetting.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has indicated that it has no plans to fix many of these issues. Despite Taskbar complaints being among the top feedback for Windows 11, the firm said in April that too few people used the missing features in previous Windows versions. And so bringing them back in Windows 11 is not a priority.
The issue, of course, is that the Windows 11 Taskbar, like the new Start menu, has been built from scratch. That is, Microsoft didn’t take features away from the Taskbar we used in Windows 10, it simply started over with a new interface that it says is faster and more reliable.
In any event, Microsoft is making some improvements to the Taskbar in Windows 10 version 22H2. Key among them is the return of drag and drop: you can once again drag a document or image file to a compatible running app’s Taskbar shortcut and that app will open so you can drop the file, opening it in that app as before. There is one weirdism, however: The dragged file icon will have a “No” symbol overlay—a circle with a line through it—which typically indicates that the operation you are attempting will not work. But it does work now.
Taskbar shortcuts also now support a “Share this window” feature that Microsoft previewed at the original Windows 11 reveal in July 2021 but never implemented in the initial release of the OS. This feature is designed to streamline the process of sharing the display of an app with others in an online meeting. It only supports Microsoft Teams right now, but this functionality can come to similar apps like Skype or Zoom should their makers choose to do so. Share this window will appear as an overlay on the live thumbnail for running apps when you’re in a Teams call.
And speaking of promised features that were never implemented, Windows 10 22H2 also sees the arrival of the Taskbar-based Mute/Unmute switch, which lets you quickly mute or unmute the app currently using the microphone, though this feature also only supports Teams at this time. (Apps need to add support for this feature manually, so it could come to other apps over time.) In the original version of Windows 11—and in Windows 11 22H2 with incompatible apps—a microphone icon still appears in the Taskbar when that hardware is being used, but clicking it will launch Settings to the Microphone page so that you can mute/unmute from there and perform other related operations.
And that’s about it: Microsoft fixed only one functional regression in the Taskbar and it added two features that it first promised last July.