One of the worst things about Windows 11 is the new taskbar. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s designers wanted to copy the Apple operating system, forgetting that Windows is usually used to work, and not just to read mail or surf the internet.
Every day the new application bar completely steals my energy, a thousand useless clicks and continuous “context switching” to switch from one program to another, given that – obviously for work reasons – I have to keep multiple instances of the same program open.
For example at least two Visual Studio, two Visual Studio Code, different “file explorer” with different folders, different consoles/terminals, different Excel files, etc.
With Windows 11 they decided that the new “taskbar” should ALWAYS group open programs of the same type, and despite huge complaints, Microsoft doesn’t want to change their mind , they said they don’t want to change it, leaving the “old” Windows user like me completely unsatisfied.
Unfortunately, the free utilities I used previously for some small taskbar features have decided not to support Windows 11, as Microsoft has completely changed the way the taskbar is implemented, and it would have required a huge amount of work.
Luckily, after months of frustration and a lot of searching, I’ve found an application that solves just this kind of problem, and it seems to work just fine: “Stardock Start11“. The utility is not free, but it costs very little (from around € 7.99 for the private user and from around € 12.99 for the business user), and you can try it for 30 days.
Here an example:
