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 
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Right click: Standard window menu |
|||
| Middle click: Switch to / Minimize / Close |
✔️ Partial | ||
| Dropping: Open with |
|||
| Hovering: List / Tooltip / Nothing |
|||
| Thumbnails: Drag to reorder |
✅ Done | ||
| Thumbnails: Left click on the active thumbnail minimizes the window |
|||
| Pinned items: Remove extra gap between items |
|||
| Pinned items: Open with double click |
✅ Done | ||
| Grouping: Don’t group |
✅ Done | ||
| Grouping: When not grouping, place new items next to the existing ones |
✅ Done | ||
| Grouping: Don’t group pinned items |
✅ Done | ||
| Grouping: Drag within/between groups using right mouse button |
|||
| Left click on combined item: Cycle through windows |
|||
| Mouse wheel: Cycle between taskbar buttons |
✅ Done | ||
| Minimize/restore when mouse is over: Taskbar buttons / Thumbnails |
✅ Done | ||
| Control volume when mouse is over: The taskbar / The notification area |
✅ Done | ||
| Customize double/middle click on empty space |
✅ Done | ||
| Hide the Start button |
|||
| Hide the “Show desktop” button |
|||
| Display seconds on the tray clock |
✅ Done | ||
| Reserve empty space on taskbar |
|||
| Change the size of taskbar icons |
✅ Done | ||
| Taskbar Inspector |
|||
| Change padding between tray icons |
✅ Done | ||
| Decombine taskbar buttons |
|||
| Show labels in taskbar buttons |
✅ Done | ||
| Taskbar on the top of the screen |
|||
| Taskbar on the side of the screen |
|||
| Open Taskbar Manager via right click |
⭐ | ||
| Taskbar with multiple rows |
|||
| 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.
Tags: 7+ taskbar tweaker, windhawk
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!!!
You’re welcome 🙂 I’m glad that my tools are making a positive impact!
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.
FWIW –
Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.ContentPresenter
Height=24
Width=24
Looked promising from UWPSpy, but didn’t work either …
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!!!
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.
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.
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 …
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!
You’re welcome, I’m glad that it helped 🙂
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:
Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/QPH03vS.png
Using one of these options should make it even easier.
Thanks for the tips. I just checked the drag within groups and it works like a charm!
Re-sent you a test E-mail.
Nope, it doesn’t arrive for some reason. Did you use the email address from the contact page?
Yes, I did, and I got a successful delivery receipt. Can you E-mail me a different address to try?
got your test E-mail and replied back.
Did you get the images and dump file E-mails?