A while ago, I published the Vertical Taskbar for Windows 11 mod. One common feedback from users was: cool, but what about moving the taskbar to the top? Now finally there’s a dedicated mod for that too: Taskbar on top for Windows 11.
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Updates on October 4th, 2024.
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Exactly 15 years ago, 7 Taskbar Tweaker v1.0 was released (changelog).
This continues the celebration tradition after the five years celebration and the ten years celebration. This time, it’s likely the last celebration as 7+ Taskbar Tweaker is doomed to become irrelevant soon. If you didn’t follow the recent blog posts, the short version is that Windows 11 comes with a new taskbar implementation, making 7+ Taskbar Tweaker incompatible and requiring a reimplementation of many of its options. After this realization, Windhawk, the customization marketplace for Windows and programs, was released to become the successor of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker. Many 7+ Taskbar Tweaker options were already ported to Windhawk mods, and it’s an ongoing effort to port more options and fill the gaps.
Below is a short timeline of the most notable milestones of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker during its lifetime.
Happy birthday! You served well!
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Updates on September 30th, 2024.
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The Taskbar Labels for Windows 11 mod was just updated to version 1.3, bringing two commonly requested options.
Combining modes
The Taskbar Labels for Windows 11 mod was published more than two years ago, when Windows 11 didn’t have labels out of the box. Eventually, Windows added labels, but like in previous Windows versions, you can only select between 2 modes:
- Show labels, don’t combine taskbar buttons
- Hide labels, combine taskbar buttons
The labels configuration is coupled to combining, and the two can’t be customized independently.
The new version of the mod changes that by providing the full range of options, allowing to select one of the four modes, as can be seen on the screenshot above:
- Show labels, don’t combine taskbar buttons
- Hide labels, combine taskbar buttons
- Show labels, combine taskbar buttons
- Hide labels, don’t combine taskbar buttons
Per-program label settings
Another common request was to configure labels per-program. Version 1.3 of the mod allows to select programs for which labels should be shown or hidden, depending on the selected mode.
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Updates on September 28th, 2024.
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Here’s another Windhawk mod that brings a 7+ Taskbar Tweaker option to Windows 11: Cycle through taskbar windows on click. It was a rather popular request on the list in Windhawk mods for the Windows 11 taskbar. The mod makes clicking on combined taskbar items cycle through windows instead of opening thumbnail previews.
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Updates on September 13th, 2024.
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There’s no easy way to customize system icons on Windows. There are tools, such as 7TSP, which make it easier to customize system icons by patching system files. This approach works, but has several drawbacks. Patching system files can be dangerous, can be difficult to revert, and the patched files can be overridden by a Windows update.
With the Windhawk Resource Redirect mod, icon themes can be installed without modifying system files. What the mod does instead is redirecting the loaded icon files to a different folder, making all programs load alternative icons without actually touching the original icons on the disk. This redirection is only done in memory, and can be disabled easily and safely by disabling the mod or exiting Windhawk.
More than 50 icon themes can be found in the Resource Redirect icon themes repository. Below is a short video demonstrating the mod. I want to thank Undisputed00x who collected the icon themes, converted them to the right format, and organized them nicely in the repository.
Click on the image to view the demo video on YouTube.
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Software on August 23rd, 2024.
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Introducing version 1.5 of Windhawk, the tool that aims to make it easier to customize Windows and programs.
Symbol cache server
The most notable new feature of the new Windhawk version is the integration with the symbol cache server.
Most users are probably familiar with this dialog which pops up after installing mods or after updating Windows:
Some mods rely on symbol files which are downloaded from the Microsoft public symbol server. These symbol files aren’t tiny, and downloading them takes time. The symbol cache server was created to calculate and store only the necessary information for each mod, which is much smaller than the symbol files. The new Windhawk version checks the symbol cache server for the relevant data, and only if this data is missing (e.g. the Windows version was just released or is too old), it falls back to downloading the symbol files.
General stability
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Updates on July 27th, 2024.
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I’m excited to announce a mod that I’ve been working on for some time now: Vertical Taskbar for Windows 11. This was the #1 request on the list in Windhawk mods for the Windows 11 taskbar. The development of this mod took some iterations and failed approaches, but I was finally able to make it work. The implementation is largely based on element rotation, which is available for UWP elements, but it also required many tricks and adjustments to make it work correctly, having the right dimensions and positions for all elements.
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Updates on June 12th, 2024.
15 Comments.
About 45 hours ago (around May 2, 13:00 UTC) Windhawk users started reporting that some of the mods stopped working. Below is a summary of what is affected and what can be done, followed by more details.
Update (21 May): The problem was resolved.
Summary
What is affected?
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Updates on May 3rd, 2024.
18 Comments.
This mod has been on my list for a while. I think the default spacing is just huge.
Back in Windows XP, there were 2 pixels between each tray icon. It was increased to 8 in Windows 7, and then to 16 in newer Windows 11 versions. I think that 8 is fine but 16 is just too much for a desktop computer.
You can get the Taskbar notification icon spacing mod here.
Enjoy, and let me know if you encounter any problems.
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Updates on January 27th, 2024.
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Windows 11 Taskbar Styler is an advanced Windhawk mod to override style attributes of the taskbar control elements. It started as a basic tool to override styles, such as color and size, of elements by their type and name. This simplistic approach was very limited, as many elements don’t have a unique type or name. In the new version of the mod, several new capabilities were added which make it much more powerful:
- Element targeting: Index, properties and a visual state can now be specified for a target. This enables to target elements which were difficult or impossible to target without affecting other, unrelated elements.
- Visual states: Styles can now be specified per visual state. This means that different styles can be specified for states such as a hovered or an active element, which is a common requirement.
- Style definition: Styles can now be specified in XAML form. This is a powerful capability that allows to use advanced styles, such as a gradient or an external image instead of a simple color for styling an element.
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Updates on December 14th, 2023.
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