The lengthy advertisement for Windows 11 was highlighted by Windows Latest after it installed the optional January update (in preview) on a Windows 10 machine.
I would upgrade to windows 11 if it wasn’t full of ads, I had two computers accidentally upgrade after mis-clicking an upgrade prompt and the experience was bad enough I reloaded the whole computer.
Not only that, but it doesn’t make sense to have a task bar on the bottom of an ultrawide display. I’ve been putting my taskbar on the left side for over a decade, and now you just can’t do that for some reason…
you can now set taskbar to ungrouped (unless full) now in win11, as of one of the recent monthly updates. still can’t move the taskbar to the left side (my preference on wide screen displays), though.
And honestly the never combined feature is really really buggy, and just downright ugly with the way it resizes the bars based on the amount of text in the window’s name, even when there’s empty space left on the taskbar. If you have your file explorer open to c:/ the bar for the File Explorer is ridiculously tiny, for no good reason. If you want uniform, clean, consistently sized tasks that only shrink to make room when the taskbar is full, forget it.
It also just gets stuck. A lot. If you have a full bar and it needs to combine, then close a couple windows to free space, a lot of times it won’t do what it’s supposed to do and “ungroup” the remaining windows. It’s very inconsistent about when and how it chooses to combine, uncombine, and shrink things.
It just barely works well enough that I’ll grit my teeth with it on my work computer, because I don’t have a choice about that, but I’m not abandoning the Windows 10 taskbar for this at home.
The update for grouping just came out a few weeks ago on 11. I know this because when I started a job 5 months ago as a regional analyst it was pure hell with windows 11 until grouping became available. I swear it knocked 10% productivity off the top.
This is also my main reason for not switching and let me tell you this issue is NOT fixed. Do not upgrade to 11. You don’t have an option to use small taskbar icons, making the ungrouped tabs massive. Plus they resize themselves constantly. I use 11 at work and the only workaround as of now is third party stuff that either costs money, is a resource hog, or both.
They (finally) changed this in a patch a few months ago. W11 still sucks, but at least it can now do this one thing that all the previous versions could do.
You can move the “start” button to the left but you can’t move the entire taskbar to the right or left to be a vertical stripe going down the side. I don’t do it but a right or left vertical bar makes much more sense than horizontal given today’s wide and ultra wide monitors.
For that matter, they said the reason for the new centered taskbar was to be better for touch screens. Centered on the left or right, sure, but centered on the bottom? That’s probably the least convenient spot for a touch interface, especially on a laptop.
I don’t like start button being on the center when using mouse, but come on, when using touch screen on my laptop I don’t really care where it’s at exactly, as it takes roughly the same amount of time to move my finger to any place on the screen.
The keyboard gets in the way a bit for me when things are lower on the screen. Haven’t tried it with a tablet, but I would assume that keeping controls near the sides, where you’re already holding the device, would be beneficial there, too.
Good catch. I somehow missed the second part of the comment I was replying to - I was referring to the ability to finally ungroup taskbar items in W11.
I had to purchase new computers for my wife and son. So W11 home edition it is. $12 for for the family pack of startallback and the PC’s run as they should. It’s so stupid that I have to do it, but it clears out all the annoying shit so it’s worth the few bucks.
I have been using classic shell/open shell since Win8 anyways. My screens look the close to the same since Win7 and I am not changing anytime soon.
They successfully reverted adding a custom toolbar to the taskbar. I create one for each of my cloud drives and one for the desktop. It turns a folder into a menu.
I organize my files in nested folders. It allows me to open files/programs much faster than searching using the mouse hover on the folders
For example:
Clouddrive^research/2023/ file.
Older files or less frequently used ones are buried deeper in a folder tree. Actives ones are very shallow so it’s fast to find them.
Windows 10 came with Candy Crush ads in the start menu (on my machine), it’s not any better than W11. Don’t get me wrong, I use W11 and think it sucks more overall, but W10 does the same crap.
I would upgrade to windows 11 if it wasn’t full of ads, I had two computers accidentally upgrade after mis-clicking an upgrade prompt and the experience was bad enough I reloaded the whole computer.
Not only that, but it doesn’t make sense to have a task bar on the bottom of an ultrawide display. I’ve been putting my taskbar on the left side for over a decade, and now you just can’t do that for some reason…
The task bar is my main reason for staying on 10. Forced grouping with icons only and no option to change it is such a bizarre design decision.
Edit: Sounds like my last major gripe with W11 has been fixed! Dreading a forced switch to 11 much less now.
you can now set taskbar to ungrouped (unless full) now in win11, as of one of the recent monthly updates. still can’t move the taskbar to the left side (my preference on wide screen displays), though.
And honestly the never combined feature is really really buggy, and just downright ugly with the way it resizes the bars based on the amount of text in the window’s name, even when there’s empty space left on the taskbar. If you have your file explorer open to c:/ the bar for the File Explorer is ridiculously tiny, for no good reason. If you want uniform, clean, consistently sized tasks that only shrink to make room when the taskbar is full, forget it.
It also just gets stuck. A lot. If you have a full bar and it needs to combine, then close a couple windows to free space, a lot of times it won’t do what it’s supposed to do and “ungroup” the remaining windows. It’s very inconsistent about when and how it chooses to combine, uncombine, and shrink things.
It just barely works well enough that I’ll grit my teeth with it on my work computer, because I don’t have a choice about that, but I’m not abandoning the Windows 10 taskbar for this at home.
My work machine is W11 and has options to change it. Not one of those stupid ‘home’ vs ‘pro’ version things is it?
You can only align the icons to the left, but you can’t move the entire taskbar to the side.
Or to the top!
The update for grouping just came out a few weeks ago on 11. I know this because when I started a job 5 months ago as a regional analyst it was pure hell with windows 11 until grouping became available. I swear it knocked 10% productivity off the top.
It’s not, that was “fixed” a while ago.
This is also my main reason for not switching and let me tell you this issue is NOT fixed. Do not upgrade to 11. You don’t have an option to use small taskbar icons, making the ungrouped tabs massive. Plus they resize themselves constantly. I use 11 at work and the only workaround as of now is third party stuff that either costs money, is a resource hog, or both.
Thank you for clarifying. That sounds awful.
They (finally) changed this in a patch a few months ago. W11 still sucks, but at least it can now do this one thing that all the previous versions could do.
You can move the “start” button to the left but you can’t move the entire taskbar to the right or left to be a vertical stripe going down the side. I don’t do it but a right or left vertical bar makes much more sense than horizontal given today’s wide and ultra wide monitors.
For that matter, they said the reason for the new centered taskbar was to be better for touch screens. Centered on the left or right, sure, but centered on the bottom? That’s probably the least convenient spot for a touch interface, especially on a laptop.
I don’t like start button being on the center when using mouse, but come on, when using touch screen on my laptop I don’t really care where it’s at exactly, as it takes roughly the same amount of time to move my finger to any place on the screen.
The keyboard gets in the way a bit for me when things are lower on the screen. Haven’t tried it with a tablet, but I would assume that keeping controls near the sides, where you’re already holding the device, would be beneficial there, too.
Good catch. I somehow missed the second part of the comment I was replying to - I was referring to the ability to finally ungroup taskbar items in W11.
I can change it on 2H22 with these instructions
https://www.howtogeek.com/ungroup-taskbar-icons-windows-11/
I had to use it on a work laptop briefly. It is still insane, when you run out of space it the apps then get put in this crappy overflow area.
You know what I used to be able to do? Make the taskbar 2, or even 3 lines. No more.
I’m staying on windows 10 for work as long as I can help it.
The “show more” menu on right click is absolute insanity. I right click files constantly, all day.
They’ve taken features away for seemingly no reason.
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I have to use W11, but I use ExplorerPatcher to make it bearable.
I had to purchase new computers for my wife and son. So W11 home edition it is. $12 for for the family pack of startallback and the PC’s run as they should. It’s so stupid that I have to do it, but it clears out all the annoying shit so it’s worth the few bucks.
I have been using classic shell/open shell since Win8 anyways. My screens look the close to the same since Win7 and I am not changing anytime soon.
I’ve been using classic shell fro years. Is there a reason you’re paying for startallback?
They successfully reverted adding a custom toolbar to the taskbar. I create one for each of my cloud drives and one for the desktop. It turns a folder into a menu.
I organize my files in nested folders. It allows me to open files/programs much faster than searching using the mouse hover on the folders
For example:
Clouddrive^research/2023/ file.
Older files or less frequently used ones are buried deeper in a folder tree. Actives ones are very shallow so it’s fast to find them.
Windows 10 came with Candy Crush ads in the start menu (on my machine), it’s not any better than W11. Don’t get me wrong, I use W11 and think it sucks more overall, but W10 does the same crap.