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Simple regedit used to fix this, but then stuff started to not work quite right as it got updated, and now I don't think that regedit works anymore.
the code required to move the taskbar to the top or sides isn’t actually in Windows 11, because Microsoft created the new taskbar from the ground up
Funny, I run a script on my work computer that let's me move it. I like it on the top.
Because fuck you, that's why.
Saved you a click.
Seriously, only go there for the facepalms.
the reason is literally "because we decided not to implement it"
Saved you a click.
“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 have a wonderful experience in those environments is just huge.”
This is such utter fucking nonsense. They already have to deal with the concept of a "client area" that encompasses variable-sized screens and (worse) the multiple-monitor situation. Movable task bar is trivial.
In Windows 10, you could move it to the top, left, or right of the screen.
In every version of Windows up until now which has contained a taskbar and start menu, as far back as Windows 95. Not just Windows 10. Let's not sell short the full extent idiocy on display, here.
"Pouring its engineering resources," my ass.
In the launch version of windows 11 and for over TWO YEARS it didn't even support drag&drop. It was working fine even on windows me
Drag and drop worked on windows 3.1. That was like the whole thing. "LOOK WHAT YOU CAN DO NOW!"
At this point, I'm fairly sure pissing people off is the point with Windows 11. It's full of AI no one wants, refuses to officially run on most hardware that people already have, despite running just fine on that same hardware UNofficially, dropped support for drag and drop, doesn't let you move the taskbar.
And thats not even to mention the fact that it monitors you, and reports back to HQ with screen grabs and usage activity.
Oh look, ZorinOS, just one singular distro, had 1.6 million downloads in the past 2 months.
Wait, is there any special thing that happened 2 months ago? Oh right. Windows 10 support ended, and microsoft told its userbase "fuck you, you can't get support for windows 10, and this computer can't update to windows 11. This computer is now trash!"
Suddenly all these youtube videos pop up "Is your PC unable to install windows 11? Try linux!"
And these videos don't try to sway you to one distro or another. They point out a few big hitters like mint or ubuntu. I can't imagine them specifically naming zorin, unless it's a zorin centric video. But I'm talking about the flood of "try linux" videos that popped up in October.
And that 1.6 million is JUST zorin. That's the runoff. I don't have numbers, or sources, but gut instinct tells me that if Zorin had 1.6 million downloads, Mint must have had like 5 million minimum. Every video always reccomends Mint. It's probably overtaken Ubuntu at some point as most used distro.
And all of this, every single bit of user loss has NOTHING to do with linux. Users are angrily switching. Not happily. They feel abandoned, and forced to switch.
If Microsoft either extended Windows 10 support, or allowed Windows 11 to be installed on reasonable hardware, this linux boom DOES NOT HAPPEN. This is Microsoft saying "Yeah bitch, money is tight! Go buy another computer, loser! You'll do what we say, and there's nothing you can do to stop us!"
That's when users switched to linux. This is pure hubris from Microsoft. It would be interesting if somehow we could get a combined number of EVERY distros doenload numbers.
Notably, Windows 10 could do the same thing without any visible issues. And that’s probably because Windows 10 was a much lighter OS than Windows 11.
There is nothing wrong with being lightweight.
Maybe, just maybe, making the startmenu in React is not the best idea.
Microsoft is doing great when it comes to supporting the rise of linux.
So I'm forced to use windows at work like the majority of my industry.
The start bar is still a thorn in my side since we switched from 10 to 11.
Standard office set up is 2 x 1920x1200 monitors and a 1920x1080 laptop. Some just leave the laptop shut when docked.
I preferred having it on a stand and using the lap top screen real estate.
In windows 10 I could make a monitor the primary and have a start bar only on the laptop. Not being able to do that in windows 11 is fucking annoying. They also fucked up auto hide start bar, it's always jumping up for bullshit I don't care about and not hiding when it should. I gave in and accepted I can't have those bottom few lines of screen real estate because they are Microsoft's.
As an engineer I do sometimes get feelings of imposter syndrome. But then I look at what Microsoft did to the start bar in windows 11 and think well at least I didn't do that.
"Microsoft applied a data-driven approach to find out which features to add now, which features to add later, and which to completely avoid.
Unfortunately, for the enthusiasts who had a left-aligned or vertical taskbar in Windows 10, you would have to settle for the fact that Microsoft’s data shows such users are really small when compared to the number of users who are asking for other newer features in the taskbar."
100% of the users that are smart enough to care about moving the task bar are also smart enough to turn off all optional telemetry. This sadly a part of why tech companies are making products for the dumbest people and pushing away power users.
I just find it hilarious that the top/right/left toolbar was possible in windows 95/98/ME
but its to much of a technocal problem to do today.
I guess thats what you get with AI doing all your coding..
That’s quite an article to say they forgot about it after re-writing the task bar for no reason. It’s such a basic expected feature.
So, to cater to the maximum number of users at once, Microsoft applied a data-driven approach to find out which features to add now, which features to add later, and which to completely avoid.
I call bullshit, because nobody uses the "modern" devices and printers interface in windows 10, because it fucking sucks. Everyone goes to the control panel instead. In windows 11, you have to use the "modern" interface, and it drives me crazy, especially because the old, fully functional, and reliable one is still in the OS, but Microsoft decided to hide it/make it a PITA to get to.
What this essentially means is that when the taskbar sits at the bottom, Windows and third-party apps know exactly how much horizontal space they have to work with.
Ah, so I assume they will remove support for any resolutions other than 1920x1080, since they need a consistent horizontal size, and that's the most common.
More than that are they just ignoring windowing an application and resizing it to fit? You know, the namesake of their operating system?
I can't move the Windows 11 taskbar because I've been running Linux for over 20 years. Recommended fix!
The amount of bullshit is incredible. The DE sets the windows position. The DE tells the apps what's the "usable" desktop area. It worked for decades. And now "you can't imagine the amount of work"
Fuck you microsoft. Not that I care anymore. Even your excuses are pathetic.
You can move taskbar to any side in Windows 98 (or earlier), but this abomination can't, that speaks volume. BTW older windows also had crazy granular theme customization, no more, that's apparently nuclear science or smth.
I honestly just want my old right mouse click back.
Easily sorted and the old right-click menu can be reinstated along with a whole loads of other tweaks -
Microsoft applied a data-driven approach to find out which features to add now, which features to add later, and which to completely avoid.
WHAT DATA?!
building the taskbar from scratch meant that they had to cherry-pick things to put into the feature list first, and the ability to move the taskbar didn’t make the cut, for several reasons that Microsoft values.
Translation: Nobody really knows (or wants to take the blame), we probably just forgot to put on the feature list. Anyway, I'll just use the usual vague weasel-words that don't really mean anything.
"Window's is built on many layers of shit and we dont know what will or won't break things.
Also co pilot was really expensive"
Microsoft’s data shows such users are really small when compared to the number of users who are asking for other newer features in the taskbar.
Asking for things like AI integration everywhere?
Apps then need to constantly reflow their layouts, resize content, adjust snapping behavior, and handle edge cases across different screen sizes, DPI settings, and multi-monitor setups. Also, this reflow logic has to work perfectly for legacy Win32 apps, modern UWP apps, and everything in between.
You mean the apps that were already handling this for decades when windows wasn't a vibe-coded and ad-infested vehicle for AI slop?
So many people at work are having frustrating issues with Windows now.
It takes so fucking long to start up. Sure, you get a desktop and can open a program, but it just keeps locking up repeatedly for a good 20 minutes while whatever bloatware is running in the background during startup.
They cram OneDrive down your throat and it has constant issues.
They put so much shit in your way, in the name of "productivity" it makes your actual productivity worse.
FUCK COPILOT.
What’s funny here is that in Microsoft’s Feedback Hub, the feedback related to “taskbar”, with the highest number of upvotes, is the one that asks the company to “Bring back the ability to move the taskbar to the top and sides if the screen on Windows 11”. We are not sure which data Microsoft used to get to such a conclusion…
The one they get from their ~~spyware~~ telemetry, probably.
The data shows everyone uses their Windows 11 taskbar at the bottom of the screen. You can't argue with that.
The whole explanation about screen size is telling.
The entire point of Windows being named Windows is that apps can run inside these resizable rectangles nicknamed windows.
Yet the rectangular taskbar is apparently impossible to handle...
Tali Roth, the then product manager working on the core Windows user experience, including the Start menu, taskbar, and notifications, took up the question and talked about how building the taskbar from scratch meant that they had to cherry-pick things to put into the feature list first, and the ability to move the taskbar didn’t make the cut, for several reasons that Microsoft values.
WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!
If you have working code, why would you rewrite it from scratch? Refactor, sure. Overhaul, maybe. But why rewrite the whole thing?! You're gaining nothing but unnecessary bugs.
I know all the joke answers. To justify a product manager's salary, because Microsoft gonna Microsoft, whatever. I want to know the real reason. Why would you ever rewrite working code from scratch if you don't have to?
Meanwhile KDE:
Put the taskbar wherever you want it's even floating if there isn't a window nearby.
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 have a wonderful experience in those environments is just huge
It was working fine in windows 95. Suddenly all programmers became incompetent and can't handle something like that?
The bit about apps having to reflow seems nonsensical. They have to reflow any time the user resizes their windows.
I'm not accepting any excuses from MS about limited resources when Linux desktop environments built by hobbyists have the feature in question.
Join team Linux!
Simple solution is to switch to Linux. Ubuntu Cinnamon 24.04LTS had worked great for me so far.
If you absolutely can't or won't switch look at openshell https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/
I'd guess it's for the same reasons why we can't have a local account
it’s safe to assume that the company isn’t interested in pouring its engineering resources into pursuing something that won’t benefit a majority of users
I mean, they could just let their awesome Copilot vibe code it, couldn't they? Another reasons why I love being on Linux; you can do whatever even it it doesn't make sense to the majority of users.
Please, consider trying out linux if you haven't: you can usually make a "live usb" and take it for a test drive without having to actually reinstall (if you don't like it, just take the usb stick out and reboot back to windows).
I would dearly love to never again have to hear about the latest bullshit Microsoft is foisting on people.
Do your part! Switch. Everything just works better over here.
Windows 11 is a bloated disaster. I urge everyone to switch to Linux or one of the BSDs.
Also switch away from Microsoft Office and use LibreOffice.
I’ve been using ExplorerPatcher to correct this and it works pretty well.
