Ramen Software

I’m happy to announce a new mod that fills yet another gap in Windows 11: Multirow taskbar for Windows 11. This was a popular request on the list in Windhawk mods for the Windows 11 taskbar. Along with other mods that bring back taskbar functionality that became unavailable in Windows 11 (Vertical Taskbar for Windows 11, Taskbar on top for Windows 11, Taskbar Labels for Windows 11), Windhawk allows for smooth updating to Windows 11 by filling the gaps for most taskbar-related functionality.

Here’s a Windhawk mod that brings another 7+ Taskbar Tweaker option to Windows 11: Taskbar classic context menu. This puts another checkbox on the Windhawk mods for the Windows 11 taskbar page.

The new mod makes the classic context menu to be shown when right-clicking on taskbar items. You can hold the Shift key to show the default jump list.

Here’s another Windhawk mod that brings a 7+ Taskbar Tweaker option to Windows 11: Disable Taskbar Thumbnails. It wasn’t the most popular request on the list in Windhawk mods for the Windows 11 taskbar, but also not the least popular, and it was requested multiple time here in the blog comments. As can be seen from the screenshot, the mod allows to disable taskbar thumbnails on hover, or to replace them with a list.

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.

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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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.

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.

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.

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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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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