Is there any way to hide taskbar labels and not combine taskbar buttons?

101

There are three options for customizing taskbar buttons in Windows 7:

Always combine, hide labels
Combine when taskbar is full
Never combine

Is there any way to hide labels and not combine taskbar buttons? Or even better, to exclude only certain applications from combining?

My main problem is that I switch a lot between two instances of a single application, and having to hover over combined icon and then choosing the correct one. Alt-Tabbing is not a good alternative when I'm switching between more than three applications; clicking on taskbar only once is what I'm looking for.

Domchi

Posted 2009-08-26T13:56:01.713

Reputation: 2 557

2Another possible solution is to put the taskbar in vertical position on the left or right edge of the screen. – Andrei Bozantan – 2015-01-17T14:46:34.763

I'd still like to know if there's a way to exclude/include certain applications. – Keith – 2014-02-10T19:24:21.390

Answers

It's something of a hack job, but this might do the trick! It requires doing a bit of registry editing to shrink the taskbar icons so that the labels auto-hide.

Set taskbar options

Open Taskbar properties.
In the "Taskbar Appearance" group, change the "Taskbar Button" option to "Never combine" if you don't want stacking.

Adding/editing the registry entry

Press Windows Key + R to open the run command
Type int "regedit" (without quotes) and press OK
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Control Panel -> Desktop -> WindowMetrics
Find the "MinWidth" entry.
If it is not there, right click on an empty space and select New -> String Value. Name this entry "MinWidth" (without quotes)
Double click on the MinWidth entry. If you want just the buttons to show, set this to 38 if you're using small buttons, 52 if you're using large buttons (or 54 in Windows 8). Otherwise any value above 38 will work. If you set a value below 38, the buttons will behave oddly. If your main display (on Windows 8.1 or later) has non-standard DPI (e.g. it's Retina or 4k display) you might need to multiply these numbers by the factor of 1.25, 1.5 or 2. Otherwise buttons will shrink / animate incorrectly.
Log off and log back in or restart to see the changes.

Deleting/Uninstalling

Press Windows Key + R to open the run command
Type int "regedit" (without quotes) and press OK
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Control Panel -> Desktop -> WindowMetrics
Find the "MinWidth" entry and delete it.
Log off and log back in or restart to see the changes.

Kyle B.

Posted 2009-08-26T13:56:01.713

Reputation: 1 358

For me it turned out that he value 56 is the optimal one (when using large icons and aero enabled). – t3chb0t – 2014-12-04T06:16:58.370

1+1 I started doing this on the Release Candidate and now I do it for all Windows 7 installs I do. – Leigh Riffel – 2010-04-07T14:31:07.943

I wish I could up-vote this more than once! I always come back and refer to this answer for every laptop that I get! – rishimaharaj – 2016-12-08T00:39:22.847

3I can't believe it, this actually does exactly what I wanted! Thanks a bunch, I was afraid that it simply wasn't possible. – Domchi – 2009-08-29T02:48:19.280

Reportedly does not work on Windows 8 Release Preview...http://superuser.com/questions/431673/windows-8-never-combine-hide-labels

– Moab – 2012-06-02T01:48:32.947

Reportedly works in Windows 8 RTM. – Karan – 2013-02-16T18:09:28.147

6If you use 52 for large buttons, as per the answer, the taskbar shrinks every time you open a pinned application. 54 seems to be the width of large pinned icons. – dlras2 – 2013-03-04T17:30:57.337

How do you turn on large buttons? – James McMahon – 2009-12-08T16:28:23.870

This is an old question, but the answer of Kyle B. didn't work well for me (glitches and flickering), so I'd like to propose an alternative solution.

Configure your taskbar for Always combine, hide labels.
Download 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.
Select the Don't combine grouped buttons option.

The end result:

As a bonus, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker also allows you to configure this option per application:

Paul

Posted 2009-08-26T13:56:01.713

Reputation: 1 022

I tried using this with Bins and got some odd behavior. I found that the grouping/combining settings of 7+TT conflict with Bins. By leaving 7+TT's grouping/combining settings as default, using Bins, and applying the above registry tweak, I was able to achieve the effect I wanted and still make use of the other tweaks this program has.

– dlras2 – 2015-01-19T16:22:42.990

17+ Taskbar Tweaker works great. I like the extra options it offers. – Jon Onstott – 2015-01-23T21:23:30.927