You might have come across various features on Windows PC and don’t know what they do. The taskbar is an important feature that you’ll find in almost every version of Windows. You can interact with a lot of other features via your taskbar.
One of those features is locking your taskbar which means the changes you’ve made to your taskbar would always be there. By doing so, you cannot move or resize your taskbar anymore. However, this doesn’t affect the performance of your system at all.
To understand this, let’s start with the basics of the taskbar in Microsoft Windows.
What is Taskbar?
The taskbar is a toolbar in Windows OS, which is usually present at the bottom. It’s a complete width row that contains date & time and other system icons such as sound, Wi-Fi, battery, language bar, and other icons.
You will see the start menu button and search option on the left. You can place the icons of recently opened apps by pinning them to the taskbar and opening them whenever you want.
It is movable and resizable, and you people can easily position it to the right, left, and top. We would suggest you increase its height and not the width. The taskbar is very important because it allows us to access all the essential apps quickly.
There is a feature available for the locking of the taskbar, which means you can’t resize or move the taskbar. Here we are going to explain in detail about taskbar features
Resize the Taskbar
You can resize the taskbar by bringing it to the specific height with the mouse pointer by closing it to the top edge of the taskbar. When the double-sided arrow appears, hold the mouse button and drag it upwards.
This would help in increasing the height. Drag it down when you want to decrease. People used to keep so many icons over the taskbar, and some are hidden due to the non-availability of the place.
When you keep on increasing the height then all icons would appear. On locking the taskbar you would be unable to see the double-sided arrow for resizing. You can access only those icons that appear on the taskbar rather than increasing the height.
Positioning The Taskbar Location
We know that taskbar is always at the bottom, but you have a chance to position it anywhere you want, either right, left, top, or bottom.
Sometimes, we accidentally change the position to other sides, which obviously shouldn’t happen, so locking the taskbar won’t allow you to change the position if you accidentally drag it with your mouse. If you need to change the position, then do you can do it by unlocking the taskbar again.
How to lock the taskbar in Windows 10?
You can lock the taskbar in Windows 10 by following two ways:
Via Right-Clicking the Taskbar
It’s pretty simple to lock the taskbar by right-clicking over it. All you need to do is right-click is an empty space on the taskbar and then click the lock taskbar option. See the image below to understand in a better way.
Through Window Settings
You can lock the taskbar in Windows 10 through Windows settings. Just follow:
- Press the Window key+ I to open the window settings.
- Click on Personalization
- Go to the Taskbar section and toggle the settings on.
Keep in mind you are not allowed to lock the taskbar in tablet mode. If you cannot lock the taskbar, see either it is in tablet mode or disable it again to try.
How To Unhide The Taskbar?
It’s pretty simple to unhide the taskbar. Just follow these steps:
- Click the bottom of the screen to view the hidden taskbar
- Right-click a space of the taskbar and click the Properties
- Uncheck the”Auto Hide” option under the “Taskbar Properties” by clicking it with the mouse once.
- Press OK
Get To Know A Brief Overview Of The Taskbar On Windows 11
Windows 11 has introduced the new version of the taskbar, which may look the same as Windows 10, but you would see huge improvements with the latest features.
The new taskbar has been kept center-aligned by redesigning the start button, and new buttons are kept for the Search, Task View, Widgets, and Chat.
There are also new animations for the taskbar, such as minimizing, maximizing, and installing the application. Windows 11 lacks so many customization options as compared to other versions of Windows. Microsoft is improving so many aspects by bringing it to the system tray.
What Features Are Offered in Redesigned Task Bar of Windows 11?
Well, it looks the same as the other versions of Windows. Microsoft has made lots of changes to improve the user experience. The new taskbar in Windows 11 is center-aligned, but people can always change the behavior just like the previous versions.
Buttons are aligned in the middle of the screen, and you will notice the new Start logo button and other widgets. Tooltips, overflow menu, previews, and highlighting buttons in the taskbar now provide a new design style with a rounded corner.
The app requires attention where flashing is available with more subtle options. Whatever features you don’t like, please remove them from the Settings > Personalization > Taskbar.
You will have a new preview feature with some recent items for the quick view feature on the hover button. The thumbnails preview will look like the one we had in previous versions.
You will have a multitasking experience where you can now hover over the app in the taskbar, which will let you switch back to the snapped Windows after switching to other apps. With this, you are not required to re-snap this again.
- The new taskbar has exciting features of new animations, such as you will notice a new bouncing animation where the taskbar loads on the desktop when the device starts. Users will experience new animation on clicking an app to open, minimize and maximize.
- The system tray is also improved. It opens the new Notification Center that includes a full-month calendar and all notifications. The latest version has grouped icons where time, date, and focus assist icons are grouped. You would see the group’s time, date, and focus assist icon.
- On playing video or music, especially on the browser, you would see the quick settings to display the media playback to control the stream. Right-click an icon to access its settings to select the available options.
- In the task behavior section, you can control the alignment of the taskbar, which helps to enable or disable the badging for apps, auto-hide, control multiple displays options to disable the desktop button.
What Problems Can Occur With New Taskbar?
We all have seen all the latest improvements, but Microsoft hasn’t resolved the few glitches, and here we are going to share. One weird change is that the taskbar is now locked at the bottom of the screen.
There is no option to position on the top or other side of the screen. Icons would be shown in the taskbar only and when you want to show labels, then never combine apps which is no longer an option.
Taskbar won’t allow to drag and drop files or apps to pin to the taskbar. Previous versions of Windows had the option to make the icons larger or smaller over the taskbar, but the latest taskbar would have only one size of the icons in the latest versions.
No longer would an adjustment be done with the height of the taskbar. We can see many tweaks in the system tray, which is now harder to use because all the icons are divided into groups.
You can’t hide the clock or other system icons, including volume, network, and microphone. These are the few features that we have tried to explain to the readers about taskbars in Windows 10 or 11. How would a locking taskbar work, and what else can you do with this.
Hi, this is Masab, the Founder of PC Building Lab. I’m a PC enthusiast who loves to share the prior knowledge and experience that I have with computers. Well, troubleshooting computers is in my DNA, what else I could say….