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The Windows 11 taskbar has two "features" that are driving me crazy. The first is that it groups icons of the same task together into a single icon that you have to hover over. This problem is fixed, however, by third-party tools like StartAllBack, and perhaps Start11 and ExplorerPatch (I haven't tried those last two.) So I'm not dealing with that type of ungrouping.

The second problem, however, is that once the icons are ungrouped, they still "stick" together side-by-side in groups. That means I can't drag one Chrome window to the left side of the taskbar, and have a second Chrome window in the middle and a third on the right side of the taskbar. All 3 taskbar entries are stuck together and move as a group if you drag them left or right.

Or to put it another way, it's impossible to have the taskbar in this arrangement:

chrome - outlook - chrome - file_explorer - putty - file_explorer - chrome

Instead, programs of the same type are forced to stay stuck together:

chrome - chrome - chrome - outlook - file_explorer - file_explorer - putty

Back in the Win10 days I used the wonderful 7+ Taskbar Tweaker to fix that. Unfortunately 7TT+ no longer works in Windows 11.

To make it more bizarre, I have two laptops here. One has Win11 natively installed, which exhibits this problem. The other was upgraded from Win10 to Win11, and the taskbar icons are not stuck. Which tells me that there must be some setting deep in Win11 (probably in the registry or group policy) that can disconnect the icons from each other, if only I can find it.

Does anyone know how to solve this? I appreciate any help!

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  • You can reorder groups of icons - just did it on Windows 11. But not re-order stuff within a main icon group. The latter does not wok.
    – John
    Apr 3, 2023 at 16:10
  • I have lately seen a post where ExplorerPatch has destroyed the display of Explorer. All attempts of myself and others to fix it failed, and our final advice was to reinstall Windows.
    – harrymc
    Apr 5, 2023 at 8:59
  • Any solution yet?
    – nicogaldo
    Nov 10, 2023 at 14:48

2 Answers 2

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At the moment, you can reorder icons but you cannot ungroup them. You need to replace the Windows taskbar by a third-party product in order to regain this option as in Windows 10.

As your upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11 resulted in keeping this option, it's clear that the option is already there in Windows 11, but there is no documentation about it or any user interface for turning it on.

Some hope is coming from the article Windows 11’s “Never Combine” taskbar icons feature is coming in the fall, dating from March 16, 2023, which states:

According to sources familiar with the development, Microsoft is finally working on returning the ability to ungroup taskbar icons/items or buttons. The feature is called the “never combine” Taskbar, which was first added to the OS with Windows 7.

With this feature, you can restore the classic Windows 10 behaviour where the same app won’t be grouped under one icon.

The feature is coming in the fall, and Microsoft is also restoring the ability to show app titles, which was removed with Windows 11 21H2. The never combine option is present in the public builds, but it doesn’t work now, and codes to make the feature work are missing.

For the moment, you need to wait for the next release, which might possibly be named 23H2, to see what will these coming options look like. If you can't wait, you could use a third-party taskbar in the meantime.

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  • Thanks for the comments. What third-party taskbars are capable of doing this? I know that StartAllBack, with all the helpful tweaks it offers, does not appear to support this. Are there others?
    – David White
    Apr 5, 2023 at 1:11
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    You have the free Open-Shell and the commercial Start11. Less well-known is Start Menu X. All implement a much-evolved Windows 7 menu.
    – harrymc
    Apr 5, 2023 at 8:55
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I had the same problem after upgrading to Windows 11 - I couldn't rearrange individual taskbar tiles belonging to a group of windows.

I used to rely on 7+TaskbarTweaker (https://ramensoftware.com/7-taskbar-tweaker) to do that, but it doesn't work with Win11 taskbar. Solution for that is to install ExplorerPatcher (https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/releases), which then re-enables 7+TaskbarTweaker to do its magic again.

There is also Windhawk (https://windhawk.net/) from the creator of 7+TaskbarTweaker which allows installing various tweaks via mods. One of those mods (https://windhawk.net/mods/taskbar-grouping) allows ungrouping taskbar tiles, but does not allow yet splitting tiles from the group to rearrange individually. May be an easy thing to implement? Not sure.

For Start Menu to look Win10-like I purchased Start11 (https://www.stardock.com/products/start11/) license. It also has Taskbar tweaks to ungroup the windows, but still no split re-arrange of individual tabs. Also it currently has no way to change middle mouse button click mapping to close the window (like 7+TaskbarTweaker does).

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