Formerly RaMMicHaeL's Blog
In the Windhawk mods for the Windows 11 taskbar blog post, I asked you to vote for taskbar features that you’d like to see as Windhawk mods. One of the features, which was also mentioned several times in the comments, is the ability to show labels in taskbar buttons, just like it was possible to do in Windows 10.
Here’s the mod that implements it, enjoy:
Taskbar Labels for Windows 11
In the Windhawk mods for the Windows 11 taskbar blog post, I asked you to vote for 7+ Taskbar Tweaker features that you’d like to see as Windhawk mods that can also be used on Windows 11. One of the most voted features was the ability to change the size of taskbar icons.
Here’s the mod that implements it, enjoy:
Change the size of taskbar icons
Before – blurry 24×24 icons:
After – original quality 32×32 icons:
In the Windhawk mods for the Windows 11 taskbar blog post, I asked you to vote for 7+ Taskbar Tweaker features that you’d like to see as Windhawk mods that can also be used on Windows 11. The second most requested features was the option to reorder taskbar thumbnails with the left mouse button.
Here’s the mod that implements it, enjoy:
Taskbar Thumbnail Reorder
Textify v1.10 comes with small but powerful enhancements that were requested by several users. The main enhancements are around the text popup, which can now be resized and edited. After resizing or editing the content, the text popup becomes pinned, and stays on the screen until it’s closed.
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Textify is a tool which allows to copy text from dialogs and controls which don’t allow it otherwise. The core functionality of Textify is implemented with user interface accessibility which is provided by Windows. Until version 1.9, Textify was using Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) which is available since Windows 95. With Windows 7, Microsoft introduced Microsoft UI Automation as a successor to MSAA. Since both frameworks worked equally well when Textify was created, I made Textify use MSAA which allowed it to support older systems as well.
But now it seems that some of the new technologies in Windows no longer support the old MSAA framework. This can be quite noticeable in Windows 11, where prominent elements such as the taskbar don’t support MSAA. To adapt to the new lack of support for MSAA, Textify now uses Microsoft UI Automation by default. Note that while the results are mostly the same, there can be subtle differences, and so it’s possible to get back to using MSAA by changing the settings in Textify.
Below are a couple of examples which compare the old MSAA which was used before v1.9 to the new Microsoft UI Automation.
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In the previous blog post, Windhawk mods for the Windows 11 taskbar, I asked you to vote for 7+ Taskbar Tweaker features that you’d like to see as Windhawk mods that can also be used on Windows 11. One of the highly requested features was the option to control the system volume by scrolling the mouse wheel over the taskbar.
Here’s the mod that implements it, enjoy:
Taskbar Volume Control
A few weeks ago, Windhawk, the customization marketplace for Windows programs, was released. You can read the announcement blog post for more details and for the motivation behind creating it. One of the sections of the blog post was dedicated to 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.
Regarding the future of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker: It will keep existing as a separate program which supports Windows 7 to Windows 10. As mentioned in a recent blog post, most parts of the taskbar were reimplemented in Windows 11, and 7+ Taskbar Tweaker can’t be made to work with the new taskbar without a huge amount of work. My plan, at least in the short term, is to implement the most demanded customizations for Windows 11 as Windhawk mods.
Below is a table with features that are available in Windows 10 but are missing in Windows 11. Some of the features are part of Windows 10 (marked with the 
icon) and some are part of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker (marked with the 
icon). Please vote for the features that you’d like to have back in Windows 11. I’ll prioritize implementing the most requested features as Windhawk mods. For each implemented feature, the page will be updated to reflect the current status.
Windhawk aims to make it easier to customize Windows programs. It allows installing and configuring mods (customization modules) with just a couple of clicks. For developers, it provides a convenient platform for developing and sharing such mods.
You can find more details, browse for the available mods and download Windhawk on the official website.
Read on for the motivation behind creating Windhawk.
As a power user, I often find the need to customize the programs I use beyond the default settings. If I’m lucky, the relevant program provides options to customize it the way I need. If that’s not the case, I have several options:
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The website just got a new, proper name – Ramen Software, and a new address – ramensoftware.com.
The rammichael.com domain was registered on April 2007, picked after my nickname which I came up with a year or two earlier – RaMMicHaeL. The nickname came to mind as a combination of a band name I liked back then and my personal name, all in mixed case which I found to be cool.
The website’s home page presented a collection of small utilities I made in my free time, and there was also a forum for discussing these utilities and other random topics. The website’s name was simply RaMMicHaeL’s home page. Some historical snapshots can be found on the Wayback Machine:
And I was even able to find a local copy of one of the earliest versions of the website’s home page.
In June 2010, I moved the website to WordPress. Here’s a snapshot from July 2010. You can see that aside from new content, the website has been mostly unchanged since then.
Today, the website gets a new name and a new address. In addition, there’s a new home page which lists the available software, just like in the old days. All the rest stays the same – the website is still about my software and I, Michael, am still its sole owner.
We’ll see what the future brings, but for now, I hope the new name will be easier to type, remember, and reason about for new visitors.
P.S. Why ramen? Well, ramen is a great dish, and I also got to keep the first three letters of the old name.
Windows 11 was officially released two days ago, and here’s another post about 7+ Taskbar Tweaker’s compatibility with it. In short: Nothing changed regarding the tweaker’s compatibility with the new Windows 11 taskbar, and probably never will, but there’s a way to get back the old taskbar, with which 7+ Taskbar Tweaker is mostly compatible.
Let’s start with the good news. Even though Microsoft reimplemented the new Windows 11 taskbar from scratch as was mentioned in the previous blog post, the old taskbar code was left beside the new one, and there are several ways to activate it. Here is a great summary of the options by Gaurav, but I’ll just mention the steps that worked for me:
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