2

What's the easiest cheapest way to make the Windows 11 taskbar act more like the Windows 10 taskbar.

For example: being able to pin a file (something.doc etc) to the Taskbar or Start Menu.

I'm open to 3rd party apps.

Clay Nichols
  • 5,448

4 Answers4

1

This is free and open-source : RetroBar, described as:

Pining for simpler times? RetroBar teleports you back in time by replacing your modern Windows taskbar with the classic Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP, or Vista style.

It does taskbars that are before Windows 10, but this may be enough.

harrymc
  • 498,455
1

As winaero.com/microsoft-is-finally-killing-the-windows-10-taskbar-code-in-windows-11 explains, in non-LTSC versions of Windows 11, before build 26002, a user could natively switch to the Windows 10 taskbar using the undermentioned code (with the $PWD being wherever they have installed vivetool):

#!/usr/bin/env -S pwsh
If ($IsWindows) { vivetool /enable /id:42537950 }
RokeJulianLockhart
  • 887
0

Here's another app that costs $7 but looks pretty good.

https://www.xda-developers.com/start11-v2-review/

(1) I am not affiliated with this company, nor do I earn anything if you buy it. I've not bought it myself.

Clay Nichols
  • 5,448
-1

After Windows 11 build 26002, ViveTool and RegEdit are unable to activate the native code that remains present in explorer.exe, because a hard-check was introduced within it.

Consequently, the sole way to achieve this (without layering another custom taskbar above it, like the aforementioned FOSS alternatives provide) is to replace Windows 11's $Env:WinDir\explorer.exe with Windows 10's counterpart, as youtu.be/52YV657Rd1Q demonstrates.

However, note the undermentioned:

Excluding $Env:WinDir\System32\Drivers\etc, nothing else within it should ever be user modified, because it is seen as corruption by sfc when checking hashes against the backups within WinSxS.

RokeJulianLockhart
  • 887