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Is there a way to arrange windows within the same application in the taskbar of Windows 7?
Right now we can freely adjust each application's position in the taskbar, but within the app itself the windows can't be reordered, for example multiple windows of firefox or chrome.
63
You can do this with 7 Taskbar Tweaker.
Just check the box Drag to reorder under Thumbnails section:
As stated on the app, it's allowing you to reorder from the thumbnail: hover the app on the taskbar and wait until the windows' thumbnail is shown, then click-and-drag the thumbnail to reorder it. The corresponding window on the taskbar will follow the order of the thumbnail.
The previously mentioned Taskbar Shuffle doesn't support Windows 7 yet, to my knowledge.
J F
Posted 2009-10-28T11:04:03.640
Reputation: 1 426
@barlop though barlop, if I recall, you might have to keep telling it each time, to sort alphabetically, it's not automatic. – barlop – 2015-04-24T20:58:01.093
1Are there any utilities that 'remember' the taskbar program order? – Daniel Sokolowski – 2015-08-27T17:44:51.263
2Clarification, this feature allows you to drag and drop the thumbnails that appear when you hover over taskbar buttons. You still cannot drag the buttons in the taskbar. – Bob Stein – 2015-11-01T17:53:36.310
3@BobStein-VisiBone: I just tried it on Windows 8.1. What you're saying (that the taskbar buttons themselves can't be dragged around) is technically correct, but it behooves me to point out that when you reorder the thumbnails, the taskbar buttons follow accordingly. – Mathieu K. – 2015-11-10T13:17:42.500
1Agreed @Mathieu, you can reorder the buttons by dragging the thumbnails. But I just noticed that the order reverts on reload e.g. a Chrome update. – Bob Stein – 2015-11-13T19:19:15.833
3Windows 10 version – ChickenFeet – 2018-02-27T05:11:52.083
Malwarebytes blocks this site. Is it safe? – TelFiRE – 2018-05-18T20:18:06.853
@TelFIRE FAQ states: "It’s a false positive. I guarantee that the tweaker binaries (and any other files on this site, unless specifically noted) are 100% clean. Also remember that the tweaker injects into explorer and modifies its memory, which is indeed suspicious." Also, you may be interested that the installer gives an option to install a Portable version instead of the Standard (Windows Registry) version.
– SherylHohman – 2019-01-19T20:03:21.8401To clarify, reorder using "thumbnails" does NOT mean the little icons on the taskbar! I kept trying to re-arrange my Firefox windows from the taskbar. Instead, hover over the taskbar icon for your app, wait for its Window List or its Window Thumbnails to appear above the taskbar. Click-drag an item there to re-order! So Happy Now :-) How have I never heard of 7 Taskbar Tweaker before ?! Should be standard. Made Donation. Also: he makes Textify: allows you to select Error Messages, etc -all that "unselectable" text, can now be copy-pasted. Hurray! Works on Windows 10, Jan 2019! – SherylHohman – 2019-01-19T20:24:12.770
@SherylHohman @BobStein and others if you want to re-order the items that are from the same program (multiple instances), you check Dont Group This is exactly what I needed to do and it took me years to find this solution. +1 – Jon Grah – 2019-05-07T03:47:31.523
Check "Drag within/between groups using right mouse button" checkbox below the Grouping and we can reorder by dragging the thumbnail preview. – trank – 2019-09-24T09:27:41.283
1You can reorder the thumbnails by checking the box "Drag to reorder" under the "Thumbnails" section in 7 Taskbar Tweaker. It works now like it should. If you don't want to use that approach, then inside of Taskbar Tweaker you can click the "Taskbar Inspector" and drag around instances of your app inside of the app group and they will move in realtime. – MikeTeeVee – 2012-06-13T19:21:08.103
1and you can sort alphabetically from 7 taskbar tweaker..taskbar inspector – barlop – 2013-01-05T02:54:45.173
16
This is possible, but quite hacky.
Lets consider, you have three windows of the same application: A, B and C. You want them to be shown on task bar as [A][B][C], while they are shown in some other order. To achieve this do the following:
explorer.exe process in Processes tab, select it and press End ProcessFile->New Task (Run...), enter explorer and click OK.This method will probably kill all Windows Explorer windows. If you need to preserve them, do the following:
Organize->Folder and search options->View->Advanced settings:Launch folder windows in separate process checkbox and click OKNow, if you have at least one Windows Explorer window, then at step 4 of the original instruction you will see two explorer.exe processes: one responsible for taskbar and another responsible for Windows Explorer windows.
To distinguish which one is which, turn on Command Line column in Task Manager (View->Select Columns...>Command Line). The explorer.exe process responsible for taskbar (i.e. the one you need to kill) will not have any arguments in command line, so its command line will look like C:\Windows\explorer.exe. The other explorer.exe process will have much longer command line looking like this: C:\Windows\explorer.exe /factory,{ceff45ee....
Mikhail Vladimirov
Posted 2009-10-28T11:04:03.640
Reputation: 261
1Unlike a display driver crash, this option doesn't preserve File Explorer windows. Still, it's nice to have a built-in option. – Mathieu K. – 2015-11-10T13:10:27.407
(I'm talking about substituting a display driver crash for steps 4 and 5, btw—which sometimes happens idiopathically on my system, and which I cannot reproduce at will.) In short, this answer explains why the order changes upon a display driver crash. – Mathieu K. – 2015-11-14T19:23:22.777
In step 2, Ctrl+Shift+Esc starts Task Manager. In step 5, Ctrl+R then typing explorer Enter starts Explorer. – Gnubie – 2016-03-23T19:11:39.040
1You're a beautiful man. This has plagued me for longer than I'd care to admit. One note of "caution", make sure that you repeat steps 1-2 for all multi-window processes to ensure that you don't accidentally de-order a different program – goodguy5 – 2016-04-08T13:54:48.957
2Anything like this for Windows 10? – Martin – 2017-02-02T16:15:51.037
worked for me under w7 – hfrmobile – 2018-08-21T13:52:50.787
This solution works under Windows 10. Thanks! – Bran – 2019-11-13T03:41:15.793
2
You can use RBTray to hide all windows and then show them in the order as you wanted.
zwhconst
Posted 2009-10-28T11:04:03.640
Reputation: 21
This is actually a simple and brilliant solution and one I have sworn by for years. Ok, so not as simple as being able to drag directly, but still dead easy, and also gives the advantage of being able to minimise almost any window to the tray if you simple wish to keep them there. Why Microsoft does not add a 'minimise to tray' option to the standard Windows menu is beyond me – Patrick Herrera – 2017-12-20T22:44:15.083
Thanks! This is simple and lovely.
I just wanted to share that this does not work with some newer Electron apps (eg VS Code). However, there's an RBTray fork out there which adds a shortcut, win+alt+down, that does the same, and that one does work everywhere I tried: https://github.com/benbuck/rbtray
2
No. Unfortunately, it is not possible yet. Opened instances of the same application are combined and their live thumbnails cannot be reordered.
Note that even if you disable Combine (Right-Click Taskbar -> Properties -> Taskbar panel -> Taskbar Buttons dropdown), an application with several instances opened will still move as one group.
A Dwarf
Posted 2009-10-28T11:04:03.640
Reputation: 17 756
Actually using 7+ Taskbar Tweaker does exactly this. Under grouping, you select Don't Group and you can separate multiple instances of the same program. I've been looking for years for this "simple" ability.
1
If you just want to re-order firefox or chrome, hitting F11 to put a browser into full screen mode will put that browser window to the far right of the list. It can be a little tedious, but if you want one specific window to be on the far left, just F11 all of the browser windows except the one you want on the left.
Stratos
Posted 2009-10-28T11:04:03.640
Reputation: 11
4Which OS? On my Windows 8.1, Chrome (Version 46.0.2490.80 m) has this behaviour, but Firefox 42.0 does not, even in its safe mode. On an old VM of Windows 7 32-bit, I install Chrome and FF (same versions as on 8.1), but neither shows this behaviour. – Mathieu K. – 2015-11-10T14:33:58.610
This was my go-to solution on Windows 7, but it does not work on Windows 10. Or maybe it depends on the browser version. I seem to think that at some point it stopped working for me even on Windows 7 Pro sometime in 2018? - so maybe that was after a browser (or Windows) update? Super Bummer loosing that ability !! – SherylHohman – 2019-01-19T19:22:00.783
8Can we expand this question to Windows 8 (including 8.1), since the problem still exists there? And Windows 10, if it exists there too? – Mathieu K. – 2015-11-10T14:36:19.013