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I would like to have a task bar on each of my monitors, but I only want applications that are currently on that monitor to be displayed on its taskbar.

This can be accomplished using UltraMon. However, the taskbar shown on the secondary and tertiary monitors is not the native Windows 7 taskbar, but rather made to try to simulate how it looks and feels. As good as it is, it is missing a ton of the features I find to be the best about the taskbar, such as program grouping, "peeking" at applications and so forth.

Is there is a way to make Windows 7 actually display its native awesome taskbar on multiple monitors?

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Nope. Not the native toolbar at least. Sorry mate, you are out of luck here. There's MonMan for Windows XP - send an email to the dev to see if you can encourage him to make it 7 compatible.

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this is actually VERY cool! and 'portable'... nice find. +1 (although not compatible with Windows 7 and thus not really an answer :) – Molly7244 Sep 29 '09 at 17:40
@Molly :) One more reason to stick with XP! Gawd I simply can't find a really good reason to get rid of XP besides all the eye-candy and windows-management features of 7. – caliban Sep 29 '09 at 17:44
only using 7 just so i know 'what's new' ... as a working environment? thanks, but no thanks :) playing with MonMan as we speak, funny: it minimizes Total Commander to the (secondary) taskbar whereas TC goes into the tray when on the primary display. to restore TC from the Monman taskbar, it requires 2 clicks. – Molly7244 Sep 29 '09 at 17:58
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on another note, i find it disgrace that Microsoft keeps ignoring multi-monitor setups as if they were some exotic occurrence. proper multi-monitor support should have been a native feature in their latest OS. – Molly7244 Sep 29 '09 at 18:12
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In between getting security + performance right, and adding multimon support, I'd rather MS just devote resources to the first option. – caliban Sep 29 '09 at 18:16
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As a developer for the product, I would recommend Actual Multiple Monitors. It is a powerful utility among others and works fine under Windows 7.

The most important feature for me is an additional taskbar on my second monitor that has all features of main taskbar like Start button and tray area with notification icons. Even more, it has the Pin to Taskbar feature of Windows 7.

Taskbars on all monitors

In individual mode, each taskbar displays the buttons only for windows which are on the same monitor (i.e. taskbar on monitor #1 displays only windows situated on monitor #1, taskbar on monitor #2 - windows on monitor #2, and so on).

In mirror mode, all taskbars display all open windows no matter what monitor a particular window is on (i.e. all taskbars show the same set of buttons).

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Downloaded it after reading this answer and it's exactly what I've been looking for. I dunno about the original question asker, but this one's a winner for me. +1 – Matthew Iselin Jun 17 '10 at 7:33
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up vote 2 down vote

For Windows 7 I'm using DisplayFusion. I find it better than UltraMon.

It shows the thumbnail preview, but minimize to taskbar goes to the native taskbar on the primary display :(

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Thanks for this. Sadly the only thing it seems to have over Ultramon is thumbnail display. Grouping is what I'd really like. :( +1 – OverloadUT Sep 29 '09 at 18:17
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up vote 2 down vote

Multiple screens isn't supported by the taskbar's API (as far as I know), but there's an alternative to UltraMon: MultiMonitor Taskbar

Note that it's freeware, though the Pro version actually has some cool features. It supports Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7.

Before:

enter image description here

After:

enter image description here

Features:

  • It adds second taskbar to the extended desktop on Monitor 2
  • It can add third taskbar to the second Extended monitor if you have 3 monitors setup.
  • It shows only applications from that Monitor
  • It hides the applications on Monitor 2 and 3 from normal Windows Taskbar
  • Adds a Move to Monitor button to windows applications (XP).
  • Add Text Clipboard Extender
  • Buttons to roll-right the taskbar (good for full screen Remote Desktop)
  • Very carefully written, I don't want to crash my own desktop!
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yep, this one not bad. pro: i like the clicpboard manager, con: no theme support (in the free version). – Molly7244 Sep 29 '09 at 17:54
Thanks for mentioning it. Even if it doesn't do what I want I always like to know of interesting (especially if free!) alternatives to popular software. :) – OverloadUT Sep 29 '09 at 18:11
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