MS Windows11: Very troublesome Taskbar feature of new Windows-11

Bathinda Helper
Fri, 10 Mar 2023 04:45:11 +0000
Lessons on Life & Computers

The latest updates released in Jan2023 onwards (I’ve seen it in 22H2 Build 22621, but it could be in last update also), there is a very big troublesome feature which is highly irritating.

Its that you can’t unstack/ungroup/uncollapse the buttons of the open windows showing in/on your taskbar. Like this:

And because of this, when there are several windows open, you can’t find and click on your desired window in hurry.
You can’t even hurriedly tell which windows are open and which are just pinned to be opened by you.
And worst, you’ve to go extra length when there are multiple windows open of the same program (like you’ve two windows or files of ms word open). Then you’ve to first find and hover over the parent icon and then move onto one of the desired window of that. This is highly time consuming when compared to earlier, unstacked, ungrouped window icons/buttons.

What did I try:

And how did it spoil my so many days

Next, when I searched and found a registry hack (or any utility) to unstack ungroup these window butons, there were strange problems to be faced by the users.

First, and perhaps the biggest, is that Alt+Tab combination works no more. And this is one of the biggest habbit that users like me have cultivated to switch between last 2 windows used in the fastest way. I just can’t do without this functionality (and on the similar lines, TaskView also stops working, which must be equally spoiler to those who’ve cultivated a habit to this kb shortcut).

And additionally, there is a volume slider (also may be brightness slider) which appeared whenever I changed my volume level with mouse wheel button.

And as soon as we unstacked/ungrouped windows buttons with some trick, this stopped showing.
This slider not only gave me a visual clue as to how much high or low my volume level was (from 0 to 100%), but also it lets the users slide the slider if they want to move in high increments (because mouse wheel moves the slider in slower, more precise, increments).

All this caused me immense pain and suffering for at least 6 days, only then I came to realize that it was not my faulty windows, it was not my faulty hard disk drive, it was not faulty or too much sophisticated Gigabyte motherboard. After doing windows re-installation many times, after changing my hard drive, after tinkling tens of mother board cmos settings, after visiting hardware repair shop and spending some money, I ultimately somehow deduced (nowhere did I find this written on google/internet) that it must be the latest update.

Now can any MS person, or any other user, tell, which way they want windows users to go?
Or rather, which way Microsoft wants to go?
First they make users cultivate some habit which took years to form.
And then suddenly one day, they wish those same users to quit that habit, with immediate effect. Or suffer!!!

#start-menu
#windows-11
#unstack
#ungroup
#uncollapse
#uncombine
#taskbar
#buttons-icons

4 posts - 2 participants