Don’t expect a native ability to move the Taskbar in Windows 11 anytime soon

Despite it being a modern operating system that can help boost your productivity, Windows 11 has been full of some missing features when compared to Windows 10. Microsoft has steadily approved to add things like Folders in the Start Menu, or the date and time on multiple monitors, but one of those still not added is the key ability to move the Taskbar to the top or the sides of the screen.

Well, as spotted by Neowin, this was a topic of discussion in a recent Microsoft AMA session on YouTube. And, it is looking as though the company seemingly confirmed this highly requested feature won’t be coming natively to Windows 11 in the foreseeable feature.

Seen here at around the 10-minute mark, when asked about the Taskbar, Tali Roth, who is the Head of Product for Windows Core Experiences at Microsoft, seems to defend Microsoft’s decision to not allow users to move the Taskbar in Windows 11. She brings the challenges of it disrupting the workflows of users, as well as how developer’s apps have to manually adjust to it.

When it comes to something like actually being able to move the taskbar to different locations on the screen, there’s a number of challenges with that. When you think about having the taskbar on the right or the left, all of a sudden the reflow and the work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment is just huge.

This is more than likely true, as Paul Thurrott points out that another AMA member mentioned out that Microsoft had to completely re-write the code for the Taskbar in Windows 11. In doing so, the ability to move the Taskbar around was lost. Hence, the feedback.

Speaking of Feedback, Roth went on to talk about the data around the need for features in Windows 11. Apparently, based on what Microsoft is seeing around the Taskbar being moved, it’s still a really small subset of users that want it, and there’s bigger things of focus right now. This is despite Feedback Hub, mainly driven by Windows enthusiasts, having tons of requests for the ability to move to Taskbar. She said:

And when you look at the data, while we know there is a set of people that love it that way and, like, really appreciate it, we also recognize that that a set of users is really small compared to the set of other folks that are asking for other features. So at the moment we are continuing to focus on things that I hear more pain around.

The final thing of discussion around the Taskbar comes around if and when Microsoft will ever add the feature back to Windows. There seems to be indication that Microsoft is listening, but doesn’t really want to actually take action on it anytime soon. Per Roth:

It is one of those things that we are still continuing to look at, and we will keep looking to feedback, but at the moment we do not have a plan or a set date for when we would, or if we should, actually build the side taskbar.

So, there you have it folks. It’s looking as though if you really want to move the Taskbar around in Windows 11, you’ll have to keep using third-party programs like Start11, which allow you to move it with no issues. It also adds the other lost ability in Windows 11, to ungroup Taskbar icons.