Are you using an old, low-resolution monitor or a laptop with a smaller screen? Do you keep a bajillion open in Windows 11 all the time? Are you a combination of both of these hypothetical users? First, thank you for your support in my trailer, and second, Windows 11 is likely to be a lot easier to use for you in the near future. A tweak to the Taskbar in the development version of Windows 11 means that apps that don’t fit the taskbar are much easier to find.
Windows 11 defaults to an icon-only view on the Taskbar, which many people don’t like. (There are some options to change that, like StartAllBack and Start11.) But if you manage to have more icons than you can – 20 if I set my resolution to 720p, which includes things like Start and Search – all the leftovers are packed into one icon, which only changes if you use something like Alt-Tab to select one of the extra apps manually labour.
As the Windows Insider blog describes (via Ars Technica), the new Dev Channel version of Windows will replace this single app icon with an ellipse (…), showing a pop-up with all apps your add-on in one button. In fact, it’s like the “stacks” feature on macOS, which shows a pop-up with the contents of a folder, except it’s a dynamic list of running programs. Items in the extras menu can be clicked and right-clicked just like the standard Taskbar, giving access to all the usual windowing features.
This and other improvements are part of Windows 11 build 25163, coming…at some point. Lately, Microsoft has been less predictable about when new builds and features will come out. But those who tend to forget to close their various apps will surely appreciate it when it arrives.
