Changing the size of the Windows 7 taskbar

Question

Is there a way to change the size of the Windows 7 Taskbar? Internal or with the help of outside programs, both welcome. Something like the MacOS X Doc Zooming effect would be OK/nice, too.

Edit: I'm essentially looking for a way to shrink it, because my laptop does not have a big screen so every pixel is valueable.

Answer 1

Right-click on the Taskbar, uncheck Lock the taskbar. You can increase its height by grabbing its side and dragging it up.

For the zooming effect, not possible by default, unless you replace the taskbar with an alternative dock. There are some suggestions here. LifeHacker has also a list of application docks.

Answer 2

OK, I did some digging...

• In the suggested question by Snark, there was a mention of Object Dock, which seems like a cool MacOS X Dock replacement for Windows. Officially it does not seem to support Windows 7, yet... But in the forums there are mentions of getting it to work.
• Then you can obviously increase the size as suggested by Snark. But I was looking for a way to shrink it. I didn't quite make that clear in my question, sorry for that.
• There is one way to shrink it a little, as it turns out: Choose small icon size.
• Another good way to get back screen real estate is to turn on Autohide. I guess that's what I will use.
• I just found another way... which might be a little extrem: Totally eliminate the taskbar.

Answer 3

Don't know whether this is relevant for you, but I could not shrink the width as narrow as I wanted until I removed some 3rd party tools from the taskbar (Thinkpad stuff: AccessConnections etc). Once I had removed them, I could drag the edge much thinner.

Answer 4

Shark's solution kind of worked for me, but make sure you also use small icons for your taskbar.

1. Right click start
2. Click properties
3. Click the taskbar tab
4. Check use small icons
5. Right click the taskbar, and make sure "lock the taskbar is off"
6. Drag the taskbar down to your preferred size.