Ramen Software

A new update for Windows 10, the April 2018 Update (was referred to as the Spring Creators Update, also known as Windows 10 version 1803, code name Redstone 4), is being worked on by Microsoft for a while, and should be released on early 2018. According to online sources, build 17133 should have been the final build to be released to the wide public, but it appears now that the release was delayed (sources: one, two).

As with every Windows update (see previous blog posts), 7+ Taskbar Tweaker needs to be updated to support the new Windows version.

I have been asked by many users to provide an updated version of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker, and since 17133 was believed to be the final version, I began working on it. For now, I did enough adjustments for the tweaker to load without crashing, but didn’t test all of the tweaks. I plan to do that in the near future. As with previous updates, those who contributed to the project can download the early alpha version here (removed) and try it out.

Update (May 20): A non-beta 7+ Taskbar Tweaker version with Windows 10 April 2018 Update support is now available. You can get it here.

A new update of Windows 10, the Fall Creators Update, is going to be available at October 17. As with every major Windows update, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker isn’t compatible with the new version (see my previous posts for details). I managed to get my hands on the new Windows version, and dedicated some time to work on an update for 7+ Taskbar Tweaker to make it compatible. Fortunately, there weren’t as many surprises as in the previous updates. If you’re running the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, please try the latest beta version of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker, and let me know if you encounter any issues.

Update (October 19): A non-beta 7+ Taskbar Tweaker version with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update support is now available. You can get it here.

We’re happy to announce the new version of Unchecky, v1.1. Here’s what’s new in this version:

Added an option to exclude selected programs

This was one of the most requested features on our UserEcho forum, and we finally decided to implement it. Even though excluding programs should be rarely necessary for Unchecky, there are some legitimate cases when this feature can be helpful:

• As described in the UserEcho topic, several antiviruses can show a warning when Unchecky tries to interact with their interface. Adding the antivirus to the excluded list of Unchecky should solve this issue.
• In rare cases, an incompatibility of Unchecky with another program can cause issues. In these rare cases, the conflicting program can be excluded as a workaround, until we officially solve it in Unchecky.

Added support for handling offers in Microsoft Edge

Two years ago, Unchecky v0.4 introduced support for browser offers. Upon the introduction of the new functionality, only Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer were supported. With Unchecky v1.1, we are adding Microsoft Edge to the list of supported browsers.
Read More…

Textify is a tool which allows to select and copy text from many places in Windows where it’s not possible otherwise. This includes error messages, dialogs, lists, and even elements of the taskbar. Since its release in March, Textify hasn’t seen much new functionality, but there’s one feature which I had in mind for a while: integrating web services with Textify. Textify could then be used for quick actions such as translating text, searching the web, looking up a word in a dictionary, and many more, which can be quite handy.

Finally, I’m happy to announce that I’ve dedicated some time to implement this functionality in Textify v1.6. Here’s a short demonstration gif:
Read More…

As you might know from my previous post about Windows 10 Creators Update and 7+ Taskbar Tweaker, I was working on an updated version of the tweaker for the new Windows 10 update lately. Last week, I have released an alpha version which fixed all of the known issues with the new Windows 10 update. No other issues were reported, and today I’m happy to announce that 7+ Taskbar Tweaker for Windows 10 Creators Update is publicly available for beta testing!

The beta version can be downloaded here. Please report any issues that you encounter. Thank you, and many thanks for all the supporters who helped me reach the donations goal for the porting effort.

A couple of days ago I’ve published a post about the state of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker for Windows 10 Creators Update, which became available recently. During these days, I’ve worked on fixing the most significant issues in order to make the tweaker work with the new update. For those of you who donated for the porting effort, you can get an experimental alpha version here (link removed).

Please note that for now, the only aspects which were tuned are the ones that prevented the tweaker from loading at all (some technical information can be found here). That means that while some options work in the alpha version, others require more work and fine tuning, and this will come in future alpha versions. For the first alpha version, the focus was to publish a working version as quickly as possible.

Alpha version changelog

• v5.2.9.2 (April 18): Fixed a crash on a multi-monitor environment.
• v5.2.9.3 (April 29): All known issues were fixed. If you find any issues with this version, please let me know.

Update (May 4): The first public beta version is available! More details here.

Microsoft’s Windows 10 Creators Update is ready, and is rolling out to users since yesterday. Unfortunately, as many of you have noticed, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker doesn’t work with the new update. Upon launching the tweaker, the following error message shows up: “7+ Taskbar Tweaker: Could not load library (104)”.

This breakage is expected, unfortunately. Like with the release of Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 8.1 Update 1, Windows 10, Windows 10 November Update and Windows 10 Anniversary Update, this update requires some changes for 7+ Taskbar Tweaker to work correctly.

I plan to work on an updated, compatible version of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker in the near future. You can help me allocate time for the porting effort by donating here:

Include the word w10u3p (Windows 10 Update 3 Porting) in the donation comments to specify that your donation is targeted for the porting.

Below is a progress bar of the donations, with the goal set as the estimated time the porting is going to take, with an average wage.

$1292 out of $1000

Like with previous updates, all donors will get access to early alpha versions during the porting process.
Also, the top three donors will get mentioned in the changelog.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Update (April 16): The first alpha version is available! More details here.
Update (May 4): The first public beta version is available! More details here.
Update (May 20): Windows 10 Creators Update is fully supported by 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.

As some of you might have noticed, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker v5.2 was released about a week ago. The main feature of the new tweaker version is the support for the new Windows 10 update, known as the Anniversary Update, which was released on August 2. Apart from the support for the new update, v5.2 brought some new features. Below are some of them.

Windows 10 virtual desktops and the order of taskbar items

Have you ever experienced the following taskbar ordering issue in Windows 10?

 
I encounter it once in a while, and I wanted to have a fix for it for a long time now. Finally, the virtual_desktop_order_fix advanced option of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker v5.2 fixes this issue and preservers the order of the taskbar items when switching between virtual desktops.
Read More…

We’re glad to announce that Unchecky v1.0, the first non-beta version of Unchecky, was released today!

No longer beta

The very first version of Unchecky was released in 2013, almost three years ago, as an experimental tool to help people avoid potentially unwanted programs.
Since then, a lot of work has been done. Many known issues were fixed. Many popular, and less popular programs became supported with time. Several cool features were added.

As of today, Unchecky has more than one million active users, which are much less likely to install software which they didn’t intend to install thanks to Unchecky. Based on the users’ experience and the feedback that we get, Unchecky is mature enough for everyday use. Therefore, we decided to finally remove the beta label from Unchecky. That means that if you were hesitant to try Unchecky because of its experimental status, it’s time to re-think it and give Unchecky a try.
Read More…

Microsoft has announced that the second update of Windows 10, the Anniversary Update, is going to be available on August 2. While the update is not available yet, there are rumors that the update will be based on Windows 10 build 14393, which is available for the participants of the Windows Insider program.

Meanwhile, I have updated 7+ Taskbar Tweaker to be compatible with Windows 10 build 14390. There’s an alpha version available, which is functional, but not complete: some of the options still don’t work properly with the new build. Also, the alpha version might work for Windows 10 build 14393, but it wasn’t tested. Those of you who have donated can get the alpha version here (the link was removed).

Alpha version changelog

• v5.1.9.2 (August 6): Implemented the Display seconds on the tray clock option, fixed the Hide the Start button option for 64-bit.
• v5.1.9.3 (August 13): Fixed the Combine grouped buttons option, fixed labels showing up for grouped buttons with the Don't combine grouped buttons option.
• v5.1.9.4 (August 19): Improved the combining options, implemented the tray_icons_padding advanced option for Windows 10, other fixes.

Update (September 1): The first public beta version is available! Get it here.
Update (September 9): Windows 10 Anniversary Update is fully supported by 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.