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 ✅ Done
Tweaker icon Middle click: Switch to / Minimize / Close ✔️ Partial
Tweaker icon Dropping: Open with
Tweaker icon Hovering: List / Tooltip / Nothing ✅ Done
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 ✔️ Partial
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 ✅ Done
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 ✅ Done
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: ,

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

  1. Adrian Michael says:

    Hi. I am trying to move away from the “7+ Taskbar Tweaker”, in Win 11, but there is one thing I cant seem to be able to activate/install with Winhawk, that the 7+ has: “Decombine -Active Group – And show labels”
    I saw here that it says ” Decombine taskbar buttons” – Done and “Taskbar Labels for windows 11” is mentioned there, but as I saw there is no way to achieve decombining the active group with that.
    It is an incredible feature (for me at least), because if I work with multiple file explorer windows, I can see the true labels in taskbar (i.e: Tools, Movies etc) and also I can copy,move files etc quickly between the explorer windows. The benefit is if i go to edge or notepad etc, the explorer recombines/regroups itself so is all neat on the taskbar.
    Is there a way to achieve the “Group by Application id” then “Combine Grouped buttons” then “Decombine -Active Group…” with Winhawk somehow?
    Thank You.

    • Hi Adrian,

      Is there a way to achieve the “Group by Application id” then “Combine Grouped buttons” then “Decombine -Active Group…” with Winhawk somehow?

      Unfortunately, there’s no Windhawk mod at this time to help with this.

      It’s not in the table because it felt too specific to me, and indeed, not many users complained that they miss it. I might look at it at some point, but due to the complexity of implementing it for the new taskbar, and due to the low demand, it’s not a high priority.

  2. Adrian Michael says:

    Thank You so much for responding. I searched and searched how to activate it for a while now , trying mods etc, I could not figure it out. I least I know for sure that is not possible currently thanks to Your response. I will stick with 7+ for as long as I can ( maybe till I have to upgrade to 24h2 or newer).

    For now I’m still using StartAllBack 3.7.11 and Win 11 23H2 in order to keep them compatible with 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.
    Best wishes !

Leave a Reply