Windhawk mods for the Windows 11 taskbar

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 Windows icon icon) and some are part of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker (marked with the Tweaker icon 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.

Voting can be done in two ways, simple voting and a donation. I added the donation option to be able to give extra priority to votes of users who wish to support the project with a donation. To vote with a donation, add the feature hashtag to the donation comment like this. Donations are a great motivating factor (thanks!), and I think that letting supporters decide where to focus first is a nice perk.

Feature Votes Donations Status
Tweaker icon Right click: Standard window menu
Tweaker icon Middle click: Switch to / Minimize / Close ✔️ Partial
Tweaker icon Dropping: Open with
Tweaker icon Hovering: List / Tooltip / Nothing
Tweaker icon Thumbnails: Drag to reorder ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Thumbnails: Left click on the active thumbnail minimizes the window
Tweaker icon Pinned items: Remove extra gap between items
Tweaker icon Pinned items: Open with double click ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Grouping: Don’t group ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Grouping: When not grouping, place new items next to the existing ones ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Grouping: Don’t group pinned items ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Grouping: Drag within/between groups using right mouse button
Tweaker icon Left click on combined item: Cycle through windows ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Mouse wheel: Cycle between taskbar buttons ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Minimize/restore when mouse is over: Taskbar buttons / Thumbnails ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Control volume when mouse is over: The taskbar / The notification area ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Customize double/middle click on empty space ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Hide the Start button ✔️ Partial
Tweaker icon Hide the “Show desktop” button ✔️ Partial
Tweaker icon Display seconds on the tray clock ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Reserve empty space on taskbar
Tweaker icon Change the size of taskbar icons ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Taskbar Inspector
Tweaker icon Change padding between tray icons ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Decombine taskbar buttons ✅ Done
Windows icon Show labels in taskbar buttons ✅ Done
Windows icon Taskbar on the top of the screen ✅ Done
Windows icon Taskbar on the side of the screen ✅ Done
Windows icon Open Taskbar Manager via right click
Windows icon Taskbar with multiple rows
Windows icon Taskbar toolbars

If a feature that you’d like to see in Windows 11 is not in the table, please let me know in the comments below.

Posted in Software, Updates by Michael (Ramen Software) on May 2nd, 2022.
Tags: ,

421 Responses to “Windhawk mods for the Windows 11 taskbar”

  1. Marshall Brooks says:

    Michael,

    I’ve been asking a lot of questions and making a lot of requests lately, and I just wanted to take a minute and thank you for all of the work and support you have put into both 7TT+ and WH.

    Especially regarding the taskbar and the start menu, out-of-the-box, Win11 seems to be something of a downgrade from (sure I could install Explorer Patcher and have the Win10 interface back, but why upgrade to keep what I had), but with WH mods I like the Win11 start menu and taskbar BETTER than the Win10 versions.

    Thank you for making my computing much more pleasant!!!

  2. Marshall Brooks says:

    Does anyone know how to adjust the spacing (padding) of the inactive SysTray (notification area) icons, using Windows Taskbar Styler.

    I found the setting for the active icons.

    Using UWPSpy, it looks like the setting should be controlled by Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Grid#OverflowRootGrid
    I tried changing that from Padding=12,12,12,12 (which seems to be what I am seeing on-screen), to Padding=2,2,2,2, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.

    I also saw where it is setup a few levels higher as a 274×174 pixel rectangle, but when I changed that, it created odd results – the taskbar size was reduced and there was only one row of icons shown in the overflow area.

    An Explorer restart didn’t change anything, I didn’t try a re-boot yet.

    • Marshall Brooks says:

      FWIW –
      Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.ContentPresenter
      Height=24
      Width=24

      Looked promising from UWPSpy, but didn’t work either …

  3. Marshall Brooks says:

    Hi Michael,

    I have a new issue that is mildly annoying and I don’t know if you can easily fix or reproduce it.

    I isolated the problem to the Taskbar labels for Windows 11 mod.

    I work fairly often with Microsoft Access and I have VBA code on startup that briefly hides and unhides the button/label in the taskbar. It works fine with out WH and it works okay if I only open one Access database.

    If I open multiple Access databases (I have grouping on but combining buttons off), one of them will open with the wrong icon. Typically it will not have any icon (which is okay, but I’ve also seen it open with the Skype for Business icon (but not the overlay), or the Windows Explorer icon, which is annoying).

    If I toggle Taskbar Labels for Windows 11 off, the correct icon is shown, and if I re-enable it, the correct icon remains.

    Hopefully, you will have a solution.

    Thank you again for all the work you have put into WH and your other programs!!!

    • I isolated the problem to the Taskbar labels for Windows 11 mod.

      Interesting, are you sure about that? The mod doesn’t do much with the icons, just adjusts some properties such as margin and padding.

      If you can come up with reproduction steps, I’ll try to reproduce and fix it.

      • Marshall Brooks says:

        Apparently, this was related to lack of space on my C:\Drive. I freed up space and it doesn’t seem to be happening anymore.

        • Marshall Brooks says:

          Spoke too soon. Freeing up space did not PERMANENTLY fix the issue. However, I was able to verify the issue is NOT with WindHawk. I thought it was related to code I was running when the database opens, but that doesn’t seem to affect it either …

  4. Ellie Weales says:

    Thank goodness I found Windhawk. I had a Windows update overnight and when I reopened my folders, the address/navigation/search bar was missing. I spent hours this morning trying to find out how to get them back. Just found a link in Reddit for your program and within seconds I had it, installed it and had the address bar back. Thank you so much!

  5. Ellie Weales says:

    Forgot to mention, I noticed you created 7+ Taskbar Tweaker and I’ve been using it for years and love it! I like to keep my open folders in a certain order and when they get out of order, I just use 7+ to ungroup, move the folder back in place, then click on group again. So easy!

    • That’s great, but while that works, there are two easier methods:

      • The “Drag to reorder” option, which allows to simply reorder the thumbnails.
      • The “Drag within/between groups using right mouse button” which can be used if you keep your taskbar buttons uncombined.

      Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/QPH03vS.png

      Using one of these options should make it even easier.

  6. Marshall Brooks says:

    Re-sent you a test E-mail.

  7. David says:

    My feature request: just start menu in bottom left corner while the rest of the taskbar remains centered.

  8. zakius says:

    while not directly related to the taskbar I’d like to suggest a mod that:
    shows only windows from the current screen in the alt+tab
    and if possible also changes the order of items in the alt+tab switcher from MRU to the order of buttons on the taskbar

    • zakius says:

      oh and a really minor thing but if all the flyouts appearing while clicking on taskbar elements would just touch it instead of levitating that would be awesome too
      it probably can be achieved with existing mods too, but due to the positioning being pinned to the top of the screen it probably would be better to calculate it dynamically

  9. Aretin says:

    “Grouping: Drag within/between groups using right mouse button”
    I hope this feature gets implemented. It is one of the most important features of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.

    I am trying to switch from 7+ to Windhawk because recently Windows 10 installed some update & once again 7+ made explorer repeatedly crash. Only closing 7+ made the system stable.

    • I hope this feature gets implemented. It is one of the most important features of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.

      Perhaps you already know this, but for now you can use the Taskbar Thumbnail Reorder mod.

      recently Windows 10 installed some update & once again 7+ made explorer repeatedly crash. Only closing 7+ made the system stable.

      Can you please enable dump capturing and send me a crash dump?

      You should be able to get it with the following steps:

      • Open regedit
      • Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Error Reporting
      • Create a key named LocalDumps
      • Create a DWORD value named DumpType with value 2
      • Trigger the crash
      • Go to the %LocalAppData%\CrashDumps folder, you should see a dump file in there

      You can email it to me.

  10. Marshall Brooks says:

    Just wanted to add one thing that might help others. I was a big fan of “Right-Click to drag between groups” with 7TT. It was one of the few features I really missed with Windhawk.

    I found a fairly good workaround – if you can live with a taskbar list instead of thumbnails – https://www.elevenforum.com/t/change-number-of-taskbar-thumbnails-to-show-before-stacked-as-list-in-windows-11.6363/ – You can then select in the list and click and drag items in the list and it will change the order of the icons also.

    This might work on the thumbnail previews also – not sure.

    • Marshall Brooks says:

      Too funny. I didn’t see the previous posts. I do have taskbar Thumbnail Reorder enabled, and I suspect that is why it works. I thought it (Taskbar Thumbnail Reorder) just allowed me to left click and move the group of icons, not the icons within the group. I used the Explore feature on WH and overlooked it also …

  11. Konrad says:

    Hi!
    Thanks for the new version of Windhawk 1.5!

    But now i get some compilation errors:

    c:\Program Files\Windhawk\Compiler\bin\clang-18: Invalid argument
    Compilation failed, the mod might require a newer Windhawk version.

    This occurs with:
    Windows 11 Start Menu Styler
    Taskbar height and icon size

    when i try to update the mods.

    Thanks
    Konrad

  12. Konrad says:

    Hi Michael,
    i turn protocol on and get the following:

    DbgViewMini v1.0.1
    Listening for OutputDebugString messages...
    12:14:37.997 18700 windhawk.exe  [WH] [AllProcessesInjector::InjectIntoNewProcess]: DllInject succeeded for new process 14992 via a remote thread
    12:14:37.997 14992 conhost.exe  [WH] LL
    12:14:37.998 14992 conhost.exe  [WH] GPA
    12:14:37.998 14992 conhost.exe  [WH] II
    12:14:37.998 14992 conhost.exe  [WH] [InjectInit]: Running InjectInit
    12:14:57.845 5104 VSCodium.exe  [WH] [NewProcessInjector::HandleCreatedProcess]: DllInject succeeded for new process 12816
    12:14:57.845 5104 VSCodium.exe  [WH] [NewProcessInjector::CreateProcessInternalW_Hook]: New process 12816 from CreateProcessInternalW("c:\Program Files\Windhawk\Compiler\bin\g++.exe", ""c:\Program Files\Windhawk\Compiler\bin\g++.exe" -std=c++23 -O2 -shared -DUNICODE -D_UNICODE -DWINVER=0x0A00 -D_WIN32_WINNT=0x0A00 -D_WIN32_IE=0x0A00 -DNTDDI_VERSION=0x0A000008 -D__USE_MINGW_ANSI_STDIO=0 -DWH_MOD "-DWH_MOD_ID=L\"taskbar-icon-size\"" "-DWH_MOD_VERSION=L\"1.2.9\"" "c:\Program Files\Windhawk\Engine\1.5_1\64\windhawk.lib" c:\ProgramData\Windhawk\EditorWorkspace\mod.wh.cpp -include windhawk_api.h -target x86_64-w64-mingw32 -o C:\ProgramData\Windhawk\Engine\Mods\64\taskbar-icon-size_1.2.9_638109.dll -DWINVER=0x0605 -lcomctl32 -lole32 -loleaut32 -lruntimeobject -lshcore -lwininet")
    12:14:57.858 12816 g++.exe  [WH] LL
    12:14:57.859 12816 g++.exe  [WH] GPA
    12:14:57.859 12816 g++.exe  [WH] II
    12:14:57.860 12816 g++.exe  [WH] [InjectInit]: Running InjectInit
    12:14:57.860 12816 g++.exe  [WH] II: 1
    12:15:01.331 5104 VSCodium.exe  [WH] [NewProcessInjector::HandleCreatedProcess]: DllInject succeeded for new process 13060
    12:15:01.331 5104 VSCodium.exe  [WH] [NewProcessInjector::CreateProcessInternalW_Hook]: New process 13060 from CreateProcessInternalW("c:\Program Files\Windhawk\Compiler\bin\g++.exe", ""c:\Program Files\Windhawk\Compiler\bin\g++.exe" -std=c++23 -O2 -shared -DUNICODE -D_UNICODE -DWINVER=0x0A00 -D_WIN32_WINNT=0x0A00 -D_WIN32_IE=0x0A00 -DNTDDI_VERSION=0x0A000008 -D__USE_MINGW_ANSI_STDIO=0 -DWH_MOD "-DWH_MOD_ID=L\"taskbar-icon-size\"" "-DWH_MOD_VERSION=L\"1.2.9\"" "c:\Program Files\Windhawk\Engine\1.5_1\64\windhawk.lib" c:\ProgramData\Windhawk\EditorWorkspace\mod.wh.cpp -include windhawk_api.h -target x86_64-w64-mingw32 -o C:\ProgramData\Windhawk\Engine\Mods\64\taskbar-icon-size_1.2.9_128243.dll -DWINVER=0x0605 -lcomctl32 -lole32 -loleaut32 -lruntimeobject -lshcore -lwininet")
    12:15:01.343 13060 g++.exe  [WH] LL
    12:15:01.343 13060 g++.exe  [WH] GPA
    12:15:01.344 13060 g++.exe  [WH] II
    12:15:01.344 13060 g++.exe  [WH] [InjectInit]: Running InjectInit
    12:15:01.345 13060 g++.exe  [WH] II: 1
    12:15:26.562 18476 VSCodium.exe  [WH] [NewProcessInjector::HandleCreatedProcess]: DllInject succeeded for new process 7900
    12:15:26.562 18476 VSCodium.exe  [WH] [NewProcessInjector::CreateProcessInternalW_Hook]: New process 7900 from CreateProcessInternalW("(NULL)", ""c:\Program Files\Windhawk\UI\VSCodium.exe" --type=gpu-process --disable-gpu-sandbox --use-gl=disabled --gpu-vendor-id=32902 --gpu-device-id=16024 --gpu-sub-system-id=2257850435 --gpu-revision=2 --gpu-driver-version=31.0.101.2128 --disable-gpu-sandbox --no-sandbox --user-data-dir="C:\ProgramData\Windhawk\UIData\user-data" --gpu-preferences=UAAAAAAAAADoAAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEgAAAAAAAAASAAAAAAAAAAYAAAAAgAAABAAAAAAAAAAGAAAAAAAAAAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOAAAAEAAAAAAAAAABAAAADgAAAAgAAAAAAAAACAAAAAAAAAA= --mojo-platform-channel-handle=1276 --field-trial-handle=1724,i,1578162911583001301,4214479298411165810,131072 --disable-features=CalculateNativeWinOcclusion,SpareRendererForSitePerProcess,WinRetrieveSuggestionsOnlyOnDemand /prefetch:2")
    12:15:26.581 7900 VSCodium.exe  [WH] LL
    12:15:26.581 7900 VSCodium.exe  [WH] GPA
    12:15:26.581 7900 VSCodium.exe  [WH] II
    12:15:26.581 7900 VSCodium.exe  [WH] [InjectInit]: Running InjectInit
    12:15:26.581 7900 VSCodium.exe  [WH] II: 1
    12:15:31.455 18700 windhawk.exe  [WH] [AllProcessesInjector::ShouldSkipNewProcess]: Skipping excluded process 10528
    

    I dont know if it’s useful…

    Thanks
    Konrad

  13. Konrad says:

    There is no further error output in the debug window when i turn off the protocol.

  14. Dmitry Barabash says:

    “Disable grouping on the taskbar” and “Middle click to close on the taskbar” mods haven’t worked with StartAllBack since version 3.8. Could you please adjust them to be compatible with StartAllBack 3.8.x?

  15. ja says:

    does any one know when Taskbar with multiple rows
    will be implemented?

  16. ClarkyAU says:

    I would like to see the possiblity of forcing a new explorer instance to be a new tab rather than a new window

  17. Chukwudum Okeke says:

    Hello Mr. Ramen, Thanks for 7TT Taskbar again. I think I will stick with Win10, security issues or not. Is it possible to scroll the Win11 Taskbar with windhawk? I cannot use a desktop or laptop OS where I cant do this without great discomfort. Why do I have to click for overflow programs in win11? It will drive me crazy.

  18. Chukwudum Okeke says:

    Yea i looked through all the WH mods and didn’t see anything remotely close to that. I guess it’s a niche feature to have taskbar pages. Does 7TT work with RevertSV? Gimme some hope man!!

  19. Shawn says:

    Hi Michael, i’m a new user of Windhawk on win11. On win10 with 7+TT, for example i can let taskbar only show icons and set up a specific program such as Excel to show label at same time, is there any way to achieve this on Windhawk? I tried Taskbar Labels for Windows 11 Mod but it didn’t work the way i expected.

  20. Arthur says:

    Hi Michael,

    I’m a happy user of 7+Taskbar for 10 years now.

    I recently switched to W11 and tried some mods, very nice.
    “Middle click to close on the taskbar” works well.

    Do you have a solution to disable “minimize window” when clicking an already active window ?

    It was possible with 7+Taskbar.
    https://tweaker.userecho.com/communities/1/topics/469-add-option-to-disable-minimize-window-when-clicking-already-active-window

    The goal is to have a behavior similar to chrome tabs.

  21. Arthur says:

    Thanks for your answer. I created this new-mod-idea
    https://github.com/ramensoftware/windhawk-mods/issues/1004
    Hope it will gather some votes !

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