Can I reorder (unstick) side-by-side icons on the taskbar in Windows 11?
Apr 3
The Windows 11 taskbar has two "features" that are driving me crazy. The first is that it groups icons of the same task together into a single icon that you have to hover over. This problem is fixed, however, by third-party tools like StartAllBack, and perhaps Start11 and ExplorerPatch (I haven't tried those last two.) So I'm not dealing with that type of ungrouping.
The second problem, however, is that once the icons are ungrouped, they still "stick" together side-by-side in groups. That means I can't drag one Chrome window to the left side of the taskbar, and have a second Chrome window in the middle and a third on the right side of the taskbar. All 3 taskbar entries are stuck together and move as a group if you drag them left or right.
Or to put it another way, it's impossible to have the taskbar in this arrangement:
chrome - outlook - chrome - file_explorer - putty - file_explorer - chrome
Instead, programs of the same type are forced to stay stuck together:
chrome - chrome - chrome - outlook - file_explorer - file_explorer - putty
Back in the Win10 days I used the wonderful 7+ Taskbar Tweaker to fix that. Unfortunately 7TT+ no longer works in Windows 11.
To make it more bizarre, I have two laptops here. One has Win11 natively installed, which exhibits this problem. The other was upgraded from Win10 to Win11, and the taskbar icons are not stuck. Which tells me that there must be some setting deep in Win11 (probably in the registry or group policy) that can disconnect the icons from each other, if only I can find it.
Does anyone know how to solve this? I appreciate any help!
1 answer
Accepted answer · original discussion
Apr 3
At the moment, you can reorder icons but you cannot ungroup them. You need to replace the Windows taskbar by a third-party product in order to regain this option as in Windows 10.
As your upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 resulted in keeping this option, it's clear that the option is already there in Windows 11, but there is no documentation about it or any user interface for turning it on.
Some hope is coming from the article Windows 11’s “Never Combine” taskbar icons feature is coming in the fall, dating from March 16, 2023, which states:
According to sources familiar with the development, Microsoft is finally working on returning the ability to ungroup taskbar icons/items or buttons. The feature is called the “never combine” Taskbar, which was first added to the OS with Windows 7.
With this feature, you can restore the classic Windows 10 behaviour where the same app won’t be grouped under one icon.
The feature is coming in the fall, and Microsoft is also restoring the ability to show app titles, which was removed with Windows 11 21H2. The never combine option is present in the public builds, but it doesn’t work now, and codes to make the feature work are missing.
For the moment, you need to wait for the next release, which might possibly be named 23H2, to see what will these coming options look like. If you can't wait, you could use a third-party taskbar in the meantime.
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