Never Combine Taskbar Buttons in Windows 11

The good folks on the Windows 11 team finally decided they didn't hate me so much and brought back options to not combine items and not hide labels on the Windows taskbar.

I knew this feature was coming, and apparently, it was released as part of September 26, 2023—KB5030310 (OS Build 22621.2361) (see additional details here). So I took a look and there it is.

Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar behaviors

There are two new settings:

Combine taskbar buttons and hide labels
Combine taskbar buttons and hide labels on other taskbars

The choices for each are: Always | When Full | Never

This is a huge feature for me. I tend to have multiple instances of apps open across multiple monitors. I want to be able to quickly scan the taskbars on each monitor to find the particular app instance that I want to activate. Now I can do that very quickly and activate it with a single click.

Always Combine (boo!)

This was the default and only behavior before the update. I always had to hover over the candidate icon on a monitor's taskbar, wait for the popup to show me the instances combined there, and then I could click to activate it if the one I wanted was in there. Or, I had to repeat the process on the next monitor to find the instance I was looking for.

The following are examples of my taskbars on three monitors with both settings set to "Always".

Monitor 1 taskbar:

Monitor 1 task bar

Monitor 2 taskbar, with the mouse hovering over the VS Code icon:

Monitor 3 taskbar:

Monitor 3 taskbar

Never Combine (yea!)

Life is better now with the Never Combine setting. I can do a quick scan across monitor taskbars and click the one I want. I can get more done with better flow and fewer micro-frustrations.

The following are examples of my taskbars on three monitors with both settings set to "Never". The same windows are open on each monitor as above.

Monitor 1 taskbar