Microsoft confirms taskbar in Windows 11 no longer supports drag and drop | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft confirms taskbar in Windows 11 no longer supports drag and drop

winaero.com

91 pointsfeikname184 comments

This was genuinely one of the more intuitive parts of the task bar. Although I'm aware that you can pin applications to the task bar by right clicking. I surely hope they give alternative ways to pin stuff.

But in the article, here's what's pissing me off:

> In Windows 11, the taskbar lost some other quite popular features users enjoyed in Windows 10. For example, you can no longer move the taskbar to the top, right, or left.

Now I'm not a user of this feature. But in my immediate circle, no less than 6 of the many people I know work with windows (maybe 30 folks ?) use the task bar on the left or right (they have different monitor setups)

Sure, it's at best anecdotal, not very significant, but it's been there since the dawn of Windows ... That's really bound to piss off some people

This was genuinely one of the more intuitive parts of the task bar.

Is it intuitive? I honestly didn't know this was something you could do, and it doesn't seem to work for me. The most I am able to do while dragging something to the taskbar is to pin it to the application that could open it. Other times I just get the same red 'X' as on Windows 11.

Is there a use pattern that I'm just not thinking of?

I’m sure Microsoft has the stats that shows almost no one uses drag and drop

Yes I think most people right click pin in context menu on an opened application

Perhaps right mouse click on the task bar and check to see if you have a checkmark next to "lock the taskbar"

Even with that check mark, I got the same behaviour as Goronmon. I've now installed 7+ Taskbar Tweaker as mentioned in a comment [1] by wayneftw and that lets you change "Pin to" to "Open with".

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27924367

You'd probably want to remove that check mark if you want to move your taskbar (the checkmark indicates you want to lock it in place so it can't be moved).

try letting the file stay on the app icon for a few seconds, it should automatically switch to that window.

I move it to the top since most window interaction is at the top: menus, minimize, close. That way my nose travels less. The inability to move the taskbar to the top is disappointing.

> That way my nose travels less

Your mouse, you mean? Otherwise you have some explaining to do :)

I didn't post the comment in question, but I'm sure they meant nose. Look at the top of the screen where a maximized window's menu bar is located. Notice where your nose is located. Next look at the bottom of the screen where the taskbar is located, and notice where your nose is located. Most likely your head moved a little and therefore your nose moved.

Next look at the top of the screen and then without moving your head, look at the taskbar. You can do it, but try it several times and it will probably start to feel a little weird. Your head is likely to want to move a bit, and holding it still takes effort.

YMMV.

Predictive text/autocorrect still sucks.

Tilting your head to look at opposite edges of the screen can irritate the neck.

Hey it might be a really tall screen :D

I do the same

I use a left-side taskbar at work. Its excellent when you're running lots of Chrome windows or similar where the title bar text is useful. In the default bottom position, applications are quickly compressed so you cannot see the title, but as text runs left-right, the task bar can display far more items whilst preserving the title. It takes a bit of getting used to, but I thoroughly recommend it.

On my personal machine I rarely have duplicate windows, so I can rely on the icons.

> Now I'm not a user of this feature. But in my immediate circle, no less than 6 of the many people I know work with windows (maybe 30 folks ?) use the task bar on the left or right (they have different monitor setups)

That's very strange. I have been a Windows developer since the 90s so I've seen a lot of setups, between other developers and all the users I have had to interact with. So this number is in the thousands easily.

I've never seen a Windows taskbar not on the bottom outside of people just experimenting with layouts, similar to how people experiment with things like WindowBlinds or Classic Shell. I don't recall ever seeing this on a business user or even a developer machine.

I'm not even being hyperbolic here. I don't recall one single instance of remoting into a machine for support, or being sent a screenshot by an end-user, that has the taskbar anywhere but the bottom.

That's since Windows 3.1.

I use it on the left because I have an ultra-wide monitor and run out of vertical space before horizontal space.

Same! Not even on an ultrawide, but 16:9 laptops make usable vertical real estate a priority

Same. I have a triple monitor setup and move it to the left.

ultrawide here. i'm stealing this idea; very smart.

I’ve used the task bar this way. (Along the left vertically) it matches how I use macOS which has the dock along the left.

Can I ask why? Just why MS, who asked for this?

Was this really a feature people were complaining about? Really?????

Why remove this feature?

What logic is this?

Trying to imitate apple os?

Best guess: someone or some group wanted to rewrite the Taskbar "from scratch" because of "all the tech debt crud making it a tough codebase to work in" and well a lot of that "tech debt" was all the stuff that made it customizable and supported drag-and-drop and all sorts of other things that users use every day but makes for a complicated codebase.

This - my theory is that there's a cadre of middle managers at Microsoft who are jealous of Apple, and express this as a persistent and pernicious trend toward imitating Apple "features." Not sure I've ever seen a single good thing come from the "user experience" crowd - sorry, you don't know better, gtfo my desktop.

I have more than once accidentally moved the task bar. It causes a moment of panic until I remember that I can just move it back. And I'm a rather computer-literate person. For someone who is not a computer person, they could see this as "I broke it" and have no idea what to do, or even if they can continue to use the computer.

It is Microsoft™ Logic®. It a variable can have only 2 states, with Microsoft™ Logic® you can have this variable in a third state which makes everyone look stoopid.

I've had my taskbar in Windows at the top of the screen since 2005. Admittedly, there was no particular reason to move it there, but having done so I'm now used to it. Having to re-learn how to use my computer because the taskbar is at the bottom now sounds extremely offputting to me.

Same group here, I have seen it a couple of times on the side, mostly left, but pretty much very isolated cases.

If I count it since 1992, and divide by the number of Windows devs I have met in life, it is pratically zero anyway.

I've been doing it when I wanted open one program many times and prevent it from stacking so I can switch between instances faster.

I'm not playing the "Microsoft ux team knows best! " game anymore. This will effectively end Windows as a viable desktop for me. I have 3+ decades of muscle memory and a layout I like. It's more than inconvenient, it means months of my computer not behaving in the way I expect, in ways that I have specifically set up according to my preferences and needs. There's a lower threshold of pain in moving to Linux, and no rent seeking garbage ux teams to get in my way.

Even just different monitors. While supposedly both are 16:9, my main monitor and my laptop have very different proportions. The laptop feels cramped vertically, so I move the taskbar to the left edge to have more space. Guess I'll autohide it when I upgrade.

I have a left side taskbar on my work laptop. I hate it, but it's better than a bottom taskbar when im constrained to crappy 16:9 with 720 vertical pixels.

I've used a right-side taskbar since Windows XP, so yeah I've been feeling pretty angry about this.

I experimented with all four sides. When I last used it on the bottom I often had it "huge" (three or four rows) with auto-hide because I didn't want to cramp vertical space that much. I thought left and top got too much in the way of Fitt's Law related muscle memory. (More applications have important controls like menus to the top and left, and when maximized you are used to just rushing the mouse to the screen corner to access them, having to back across the taskbar never quite worked for me.)

Right-hand side seemed optimal to me in Windows XP and continues to feel that way today, especially as monitors have only gotten wider from when I started on classic square CRTs.

Since Vista introduced "Aero Peek" I felt far less of a need for window titles directly in the Taskbar, so I generally only ever use the Taskbar about the same width as the default height when at the bottom. (I like it just a tiny bit wider than that where on the main monitor in a vertical orientation Windows expands out the full date and day of the week in the clock panel.) At those widths my right side taskbars take up far fewer total pixels (and especially far fewer total unused "whitespace" pixels) on widescreen than a horizontal taskbar. It's especially a stark contrast on my ultrawidescreen home desktop where you just lose so much valuable screen real estate to wide empty expanses of taskbar when horizontal.

(I even appreciate the thought/theory behind the centering they are going for bringing things better into "eye line" on an ultrawide, but with all those wasted pixels around it I could be using to uncramp vertical space in apps, I think they have the right general idea but the very wrong implementation.)

On all the servers I manage, 250+, I put the task bar on the left or right. It's my quick and dirty way of making me visually identify where I am so I don't do anything stupid.

I had no idea this was a thing, and I've been using Windows since before Windows 3.0.

Well, Taskbar only existed since Windows 95 and onwards, so you're at least forgiven for the previous versions :)

But as far as I remember, even since '95 you could move the taskbar to whichever edge you wanted.

Everyone says they don't want to switch to Linux because they don't want to learn a new UI. That's why you do it once so you're not forced to with the next Windows update. I'm typing this on a machine with the same WM config I had on my first laptop 17 years ago.

I always place the taskbar at the top of the screen, and make sure that Outlook is the first icon in the taskbar, on the left (dragging & dropping it if I have to), so it's always in the same place.

Would not be happy if that no longer became possible.

I used to keep it on the left years ago, but I stopped doing that a long time ago. But typical Microsoft... everything becomes less flexible over time. The UI in Windows 2000 was light-years better than anything they've had in the last 10 years.

Only place I had to move taskbar to the top was their surface pro, because the edge of the screen lines up with the keyboard, making it difficult to tap on taskbar items or start button in the "laptop mode". What a joke

For what it's worth, there's a very easy registry edit that can be done to restore this functionality, but it's annoying it's not built-in anymore.

I place the taskbar on the right of the screen so hope this doesn't cause confusion for users who customize.

I haven't used Windows for many years at this point but, back when I did, my taskbar lived on the left (and was set to auto-hide). If I was still on Windows now then losing the ability to move it would be very jarring for me.

> In Windows 11, the taskbar lost some other quite popular features users enjoyed in Windows 10. For example, you can no longer move the taskbar to the top, right, or left.

I have a feeling this is gonna be the big issue for some people. I personally just leave it at the bottom, but there's something to be said that when you have a standard 16:9 monitor, it doesn't make sense to remove that space from the vertical axis when most content is already too wide for that aspect ratio.

Agreed. Especially on a small screen like a laptop, being able to reclaim the dock space by positioning on the side is VERY useful.

It sounds like the most trivial concern, but this is absolutely the level of configuration that makes one contemplate shell or OS replacement.

I've had the taskbar at the top of the screen for well over ten years. When I want to know the time I look in the top right corner, same as on my mac. Tray icons are also in that same corner, just like on mac. Sure mac dock can't be put up there, but I just use spotlight (as I use the start menu search on windows).

I'm planning on staying on windows 10 until they pry it from my cold, dead hands. I already had reservations before, but breaking my muscle memory like that is the last straw. Though I suppose I'll have to eventually update when software starts only working on it.

> I have a feeling this is gonna be the big issue for some people.

Some users will moan, maybe less than 0.001% will consider moving to a different OS, and things will just continue as it stands. MS knows they have a captive audience with Windows, so they don't have to care what the users want.

In areas where MS does not have a captive audience they are much more competitive and provide much better value.

I wonder why they removed the feature. Microsoft isn’t exactly known for cutting features to achieve a minimalist interface.

They probably rewrote the entire taskbar because reasons and when the deadline neared, they cut features.

I would not rule out the possibility that the team that rewrote the taskbar does not include a single person who wrote the original taskbar and now nobody knows how to get drag and drop to work reliably with all formats.

I forget where I read it but I heard that this has been a big problem in Microsoft: it's politically easier for a team to get approval to write a whole new feature (to replace an existing one) than it is for an existing team to get approval to spend a significant amount of effort making big changes/improvements. I suppose it makes sense in a lot of ways to work like this but it can lead to situations where a new component doesn't do half the things that the old component used to do. I'd be interested to learn if that really is what happened here.

Yes they are. So much of the flexibility of the desktop UI disappeared with Windows 8. It's literally less customizable than Windows 2 was.

> If this controversial change frustrates you, as well as thousands of other insiders, make sure to send your feedback to Microsoft.

Or, just don't use windows 11. I certainly won't. I'm only using win10 as it is because they don't care if you use an unauthorized copy for free. At this point my camel's back is a needle away from switching to linux/mac.

If you like choice I can really recommend KDE. It's got much more configurability than Windows or Mac. You'll be no longer stuck with what a mega corporation decides is best for you. I run it on top of FreeBSD myself.

Gnome is nice too but suffers from the same lack of configurability. It's too opinionated like Mac. You can make it more flexible but you'll end up having a lot of plugins that end up being hard to maintain across version updates. Every time I'm looking for a function in Gnome and Google it I find an old thread discussing how it used to have it but the Devs removed it because they didn't agree with it or deem it necessary.

In contrast with that the idea of "Options everywhere!" seems to still be the KDE philosophy so if you like choice this is the place to go IMO :)

> Gnome is nice too but suffers from the same lack of configurability. It's too opinionated like Mac. You can make it more flexible but you'll end up having a lot of plugins that end up being hard to maintain across version updates. Every time I'm looking for a function in Gnome and Google it I find an old thread discussing how it used to have it but the Devs removed it because they didn't agree with it or deem it necessary.

I'm getting tried of "opinionated" technologies. Everyone has opinions, but it's a dick move to force yours on others like that's a good thing.

I think it's so common now because Apple has become so popular and trendsetting. Apple have always been very opinionated but they've steered the industry along with them. Everyone follows them in some way, like when vista basically copied Aqua and when they moved to flat design everyone followed.

Opinionated software works for simple apps but not for whole OSes IMO. I'm glad there's still systems around that offer more choices but they are becoming more fringey now.

The same if you want an OS without any kind of telemetry. Neither Microsoft nor Apple are saints there.

Ironically, OSX lets you move the dock to left/right of the screen

True but not gladly :) It reverts to a much simpler view (at least it did last time I tried it)

Every year or so I reevaluate whether Linux can run without dual boot on my desktop and the cycle is the same - something that was previously a blocker is no longer a blocker, but along the way I discover some other issue. It used to be gaming, GPU video decoding on Firefox, etc. Now it is the fact that most music production software uses iLok - in particular I've been using Neural DSP VSTs to play and record guitar.

If there is a workaround for that I'm onboard... At least until I discover the next blocker.

I was using Linux for about 5 years, with my MPK Mini II through LMMS without any hassle (my needs are basic). I moved back to Windows a week ago and decided to go all-in on using the software they offered with the instrument. The amount of registering, license agreeing, and license managing (including iLok) I had to go through was absolutely sickening. I knew it was going to bad, I've heard plenty of complaints, but I didn't think it would be nearly that crazy. I really wish the digital audio industry would change on the front, it's worse than any other type of software I've used personally. Until then, I'm just going to stick with analog instruments.

Currently the only reason I use windows at all is because Fusion 360 only runs on windows. As soon as I find a seamless workaround, I can finally dump it completely. Pretty excited about that!

Every time Microsoft or Apple introduce something that a vocal group doesn't like, it is going to be the year of Desktop GNU/Linux, and then it is not.

> Or, just don't use windows 11. I certainly won't.

With their support schedule, you'll probably have to sooner than you think, if you need to keep using Windows.

>Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10 on October 14th, 2025

I'm optimistic that by 2025 either Microsoft or a third party have developed a way to put the taskbar back at the top. It's apparently possible to use the W10 taskbar in W11 with a registry hack, in the current builds.

There's a registry key that can move the taskbar to the top. I was on the win11 beta for about a week before going back to a clean win10 install. I hope they can smooth out the taskbar issues because that alone is what put me back to win10. It's a beta, of course, but the taskbar is currently very buggy.

I'm still on Windows 7 and nothing bad has happened.

Just as soon as the CAD tools I've put a decade into learning and building tools for work on something other than Windows, I'll be right with you.

That is hard. I have two decades plus starting in 89. Windows is a lock.

Fir a time, I ran NX on both Mac OS and Linux. Linux is a tough setup. Mac OS was easier. Both are missing features related to fonts.

Other than that, it reminded me of running high end SDRC on IRIX. :D

Support is either gone or on the serious fade today. Too much integration and momentum.

I switched from Windows to Mac and am now very happily running Fedora. Fedora is really nice out of the box, once you get used to the Gnome desktop way of doing things. Now, when I have to use a Windows or OSX machine, I generally find the experience to be subpar. I’d never have expected that.

Also, Steam + gaming works surprisingly well.

I guess what I’m saying is: give it a shot!

I'm not sure this change is reason enough to give up possibly decades of experience with Windows. Switching platforms can slow your work down for months if you have a unique and optimized workflow.

I think that's what parent is saying: just stay on Windows 10 and you won't have to deal with switching to anything, including the flaming garbage heap of Windows 11.

I'm with you, in concept. I stopped using Windows on any of my personal machines back around the Win 98 days.

Unfortunately, my employer makes me use it at work, so I can't really avoid it.

Win 98 was the last Windows I paid for.

If they bork it up, it costs other people money, because it costs me time.

I run it mostly standard, bog standard and got really good at the basics. Best overall path.

Maybe they want to force that on everyone?

Whittle it down to the nubs and there is less support overall.

I am happy to do the work, let someone else buy Windows.

If your employer gives you a Windows laptop with a company image on it like mine does, it eventually won't matter how much you protest against it.

If there's one thing that all the bad news coming about Windows are not capable of, is me switching to mac. I've used it daily for work for years, and I still hate everything about it except the shell (even that, at times...)

I'd be happy with Linux but I never had the time/inclination to ensure my games work there. Win11's taskbar might just get me to find out.

Lots of companies will refuse to let you choose an environment, or only offer a Mac. Not everyone can switch jobs over an OS, so those people are stuck.

Mac wont be a choice for much longer, the writing on the wall is obvious that MacOS is on it's way to being deprecated. Within 10 years the desktop Mac experience will be closer to iPadOS than MacOS of today.

Aren't they doing the complete opposite by, for example, not adding touchscreen to Macs and handicapping iPadOS on purpose so that it can't be used for real work despite having an M1?

They benefit way more from selling multiple devices for different purposes than they would from selling "THE" ultimate device.

> writing on the wall is obvious that MacOS is on it's way to being deprecated

I must have my back turned. Where is this wall? Apple seems to be investing quite heavily into its Mac line-up, including by differentiating it from iOS devices.

I think the biggest danger for the developer crowd is that Apple locks down MacOS so much that our tools and workflows become more limited and difficult to use. I'm not saying that will happen, but it seems more possible today than it did five years ago.

Great, it means more System 9 and less UNIX.

For me the inability to move the taskbar on the left side would be a no go. Vertical space on a 16:9 monitor is too precious. Maybe this will be the time I finally rotate my monitor

It would be hilarious if the taskbar remained on the long side of the monitor after you rotate it. Given these baffling changes, I might not even be surprised.

The lack of vertical taskbar is so mind bogglingly stupid, I don't know what to say.

Jokes on them for using bottom taskbar on 32:9. It looks absurd.. I really wonder what is the reasoning behind this. They had pretty good taskbar structure and now it's scrapped..

What? If that's true, they've gone completely insane. I know non 16:9 panels have been making a resurgence but most panels will be portrait for a while.

Besides, windows has had the best vertical taskbar implementation from all DEs since 95.

It seems to be true. It's mentioned in the article and one of the things Insiders with hardware that supports 11 are currently complaining about. The new taskbar can't be moved to any other position than the bottom for the first time since Windows 95. As a right side taskbar user since before even the age of 16:9 panels but who especially appreciates vertical taskbars in the age of 21:9+ ultrawides, everything about this loss of such an old feature boggles my mind (and makes me angry).

There are two issues here: 1. The task bar, application, and process metaphor in Windows is not conducive to drag-and-drop onto taskbar items. Dropping onto an exe would start a process and pass the file as an argument, but doing this onto a window doesn't make sense. Does it start a new process from the file the window's existing process is based on? This would rely on that program recognizing it's already running and sending a message the other instance to open the dropped file then exit. If a program isn't document-oriented, this could be even harder to tell what to do. Theoretically windows could send a drop message to the process passing the window handle...

2. I vaguely recall a patent issue in the 2000s around this issue. At the time, lots of drag-and-drop actions resulted in explicit error messages indicating Microsoft knew what the user wanted to do but that it wasn't able to respond as the user intended. I quickly searched for the patent but could not find it.

> Does it start a new process from the file the window's existing process is based on? This would rely on that program recognizing it's already running and sending a message the other instance to open the dropped file then exit.

You make it sound like this is somehow crazy complex behavior that no one would have implemented, but this is table stakes for a Windows application as otherwise double-clicking files that are supposed to open in your program wouldn't work.

It is crazy complex.

Task bar items don't represent exe files, they represent windows spawned by process started from exe files. Excel has many different behaviors depending on how you open a file. In fact, you can get excel into a state where double clicking a file opens in a hidden instance of excel that you can never see.

If you drag a file to a notepad window taskbar item, should it open in that window? should it open a new window in that process? Should it start a new process with that file? Should users have control over how that happens or should application developers? Or both? Or Microsoft?

On macos, theres only ever one instance of an application open so these questions are easy answer. On windows, they arent.

it's not that complex. If you drag it to the notepad icon, it opens a new process. If you drag it over the icon and then over to one of the small window previews that pop up, it sends the file to that window

Regarding 2, we’re rapidly approaching the expiration date on any relevant patents from the early 00s. I wonder what software will look like 10 years from now when all the great ideas can be commoditized…

Maybe a lot better?

For clarification, you can still reorder the icons you have pinned to the taskbar by dragging in Windows 11. And you can pin additional items from the Start Menu to the taskbar by right-clicking the app in the Start Menu, selecting More, and then Pin to taskbar. You can add items to the Start Menu by creating a shortcut within the "%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu" directory. Items added to the start menu like this can then be pinned to the taskbar using the method already mentioned.

Source: I just did all of this in the current Windows 11 Insider release as part of testing an upcoming PortableApps.com Platform release.

So, you can still pin just about anything to the taskbar, it's just a more convoluted way of doing it than dragging. And, I'd wager, we'll have third party utilities that will automate the above for folks who like to pin random items regularly. Heck, I may do it myself and stick it on github if people would like.

Reaffirming assumptions is a totally valid activity for a redesign of anything so long established, as Windows clearly is. However there are better ways to go about it than lop off widely used functionality and see how much people yell.

If you do it too much, users willing to give feedback will have less energy and nuance left for the really smart stuff, as they dig their heels in to fight hard for the simple things.

Hopefully taskbar repositioning gets walked back like the Safari tab UI redesign in Monterrey

Having the taskbar at bottom of wide screen is waste of the valuable height! Where can I give Microsoft feedback without the Feedback Hub app?

Fwiw, you don't need to be an Insider to install Feedback Hub. Just search for it in the Store. Now would probably be a great time for even non-Insiders to download it and pile on votes for stuff like this.

Drag and drop was already abysmal on Windows compared to MacOS, things I take for granted on MacOS like dragging an image from a web browser to a photoshop document just don't work. This is just another kick in the teeth for people who find this a fast and flexible way to work.

That is entirely the applications fault. Win32 supplies APIs for the clipboard and drag and drop. The application developers chose to not implement them.

What programs did you use? It works fine with Firefox on Win 10. When dragging an image from Microsoft Edge to another program though, it shows a "No drop" cursor.

I don't have Photoshop, but that works fine in Krita on Windows and Linux. Maybe Adobe didn't bother implementing it?

My favourite feature is dragging the icon in the title bar to move the file it represents around.

I can confirm dragging an image from Firefox to Photoshop works. Krita too. It does not work in Chrome or Edge though. It sounds like it's a Chromium problem, not a Windows problem.

Interesting post about Win11 taskbar by the guy who's made me forget that Windows taskbar has been hot garbage since 7:

https://rammichael.com/7-taskbar-tweaker-and-a-first-look-at...

Thanks for posting this! 7+ Taskbar Tweaker is such a fine and useful piece of software that it's on top of my list of things to install on a fresh Windows (alongside Total Commander, FastStone Image Viewer, Keypirinha, f.lux, Everything...)

They killed drag and drop and changed right click menus from the recent files list on pinned apps. I knew I was going to hate this modern ui right then.

Sure it was a complex menu but it was so feature rich.

That all seems like more touch UI casualties.

Maybe they should just eliminate the mouse.

I'm still using a Windows XP style task bar which is about the same height in total but two rows.

The bottom rows has the currently open applications with the begining of the window title directly visible, the top row has a list of small icons for shortcuts to often used programs (maybe thirty or so).

I find this incredibly more productive than the redesigned taskbar with its huge square buttons and mixing of shortcuts and current windows.

It sounds like you're unhappy with the taskbar's defaults but didn't look into changing it? You can make the buttons small and show the titles (in "Taskbar settings") and make the taskbar bigger so it has multiple rows (uncheck "Lock the taskbar" and drag the edge further out).

The person you're responding to has changed the defaults.

For what it's worth, Windows 11 supports none of these things, which is incredibly frustrating. I have the icons set small, which is good because the taskbar is smaller - but you cannot have two rows, nor can you have titlebar text available on the buttons "long-form style" as was an option in Windows 10.

Additionally, there is no way to ungroup items like Win10 had, so you have only one button per application rather than per window, as I would prefer.

> The person you're responding to has changed the defaults.

Hm. Are you sure? Their description of the different behaviour of the top and bottom rows doesn't sound possible, so I assumed their taskbar was a third party one or used third party extension that adds features.

The Windows 11 Taskbar sounds pretty bad from your description.

> The Windows 11 Taskbar sounds pretty bad from your description.

Yes, this is exactly what all the complaints are about in this thread: all of the customization supported by the Taskbar since Windows 95 has disappeared in Windows 11 Insider Builds. It only supports the bottom of the screen. It no longer supports drag and drop (what the article here is specifically complaining about). It doesn't support "Quick Launch" and most other "additional toolbars". (That admittedly haven't been well supported since XP anyway, but that's not particularly here nor there.) It sounds like a complete rewrite where they didn't bother to implement even a third of the old features.

Yes I changed the default. "Use small taskbar buttons", "Never combine taskbar buttons", To get the second small row on top I use the "toolbar" function pointed to QuickLaunch folder full of shortcuts.

I do use a third party program (Open Shell Menu) to replace the Windows start menu with the one from Win 7.

> The Windows 11 Taskbar sounds pretty bad from your description.

Alas, it is.

There's a short thread on Twitter about it here: https://twitter.com/dixonary_/status/1409852434609020933?s=2...

Microsoft seems to have a knack for making Windows less useful and more annoying with every release.

The most frustrating thing for me is that it's so inonsistent with its UI. There are literally three different sound device control panels now, each with their own style and subset of functionality.

I wouldn't mind it so much if it wasn't for the fact that Windows 10 always refers me to the less functional (but prettier) sound control panel when I search for "sound". If I want to actually get to the settings I want, I have to dig through things to find the "old" windows sound control panel. It is antiquated, but still holds all the functionality I need.

I do feel their pain, though. They want to make things simple for the average user, but still cater to the power user. It's a very difficult line to straddle, and I think they end up upsetting both groups of users.

I have really come to love OSX. It just works. It's secure. It's easy to use. The UI is simple and consistent, but I can still get to the power user settings very easily.

Pretty much the only thing I use my Windows computer for anymore is crypto mining and gaming.

Try to open network adapter settings .. still so many mouse clicks.

I know this doesn’t solve the annoying GUI, but Win+R, “ncpa.cpl”.

Didn't even know you could do that. Maybe Microsoft's Telemetry figured out that not many people knew it also.

Vision from a small group of individuals who care always beats just trying to scry design from looking at metrics, even when the metrics are millions.

The problem is, the "small group" is also the same small group who figures out how to disable or firewall the telemetry. So their use cases end up being ignored completely.

That's the downside to force-feeding telemetry to everybody without respecting individual user preferences. Some people won't like that, and will find workarounds to disable it. While those clearly aren't the users you need to pay the most attention to, they are among the users that you least want to ignore or disenfranchise.

The irony being that if telemetry had been voluntary, most of us would never have bothered turning it off.

Presumably, parent meant that that small group of individuals would be an explicit focus panel rather than passive telemetry being gathered.

Or a bit larger companys. They also mostly send no telemerty.

It does seem weird to me because I think of dragging on to the taskbar creating a shortcut. It isn't necessarily incompatible with dragging onto an existing icon to open but the on/between difference always seemed a bit small for me.

I just want to be able to drag taskbar items around in the taskbar like I can with Chrome tabs.

7+ Taskbar Tweaker lets you do this in Windows 10, even breaking out of window groups. XFCE lets you do it out of the box. XFCE does also let you drag files to the taskbar item to activate that window, which I do occasionally. I already switched to Manjaro everywhere for work though, so Microsoft can do whatever they want. Windows machines are just for games and watching streams in my house.

It reminds me during the last win10 update they added that stupid weather widget on the task bar.

Best part is, that “feature” doesn’t exist in windows 11, they rolled that out knowing it would be gone in 6 months. Someone in marketing needed their win.

It also only works if the taskbar is on the bottom of the screen. I wanted to try it out and it took a long time to realize it wasn’t showing up because I use Windows with a taskbar on the top of screen.

Hehe, same. I thought I had the wrong version of Win10 and that's why I was lucky to not get it. Actually the whole Win10 version thing is a disaster, with the old SP names you could at least easily check, but iirc the 20H1 is not in the version string and upgrading is either completely transparent or completely opaque...

In the "About This System" page in Settings (System > About in the Settings hierarchy or it took over the Win+X > System shortcut from the old System Control Panel) under "Windows Specifications" header the Version field there has always exactly matched the "Feature Update Release Version" including things like "20H1". Getting that from an API is intentionally not straightforward (you have to convince Windows you know about the version you are asking about), but its pretty readable there in the Settings panel if you need it as a human.

Arguably they added that "feature" as a "preview" for 11's new take on Vista's (rarely used) Widgets panel (that moves Live Tiles from a place they are useful if configured right and get increasingly rare developer support to a place that pretty much guarantees their death), as all the junk in the Widgets panel that's not the dying Live Tiles seems to be the same junk news stuff in the annoying 10 "weather popup".

Surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but this is a huge loss for accessibility.

After I started using Linux with Gnome, I realized how much less strain I was putting on my wrists with the taskbar/launcher and window controls on the left. Since as a right-handed person, it, the angle of my wrist is at a much more comfortable angle, about 45 degrees facing inward. It's way more natural to do a side to side swiping motion with your forearm than a jerky up and down motion when the taskbar is in the default bottom position and you're switching between windows all day.

I only use Windows at work now but if they haven't added this back by the time we have to upgrade to Windows 11, it'll only be a matter of time before I start getting carpal tunnel symptoms again.

I bet there are others that have limited arm mobility that also rely on this customization that will be even more harmed by this.

In Windows 98-ish era I was using an alternative "shells" for Windows UI. First one was "Geoshell" IIRC, after that I used "Blackbox" for more minimalistic look and feel. Nice to see Microsoft opening a niche for alternative UI implementations again.

> you can open a file by dragging it onto an app on the taskbar

I honestly thought this wasn't true because it never worked when I tried it. Is the third party support for this feature just really lacking compared to macOS where it seems universal?

IIRC you gotta hold the file over the program's taskbar icon for bit then it changes to that window as active and there you can drop. Try with e.g. Your browser on Google drive for uplaoding

That's a separate thing that seems more widely supported. The article seems to be talking about dropping on the program's taskbar button itself: "In Windows 10, you can open a file by dragging it onto an app on the taskbar."

As far as I can tell, no programs support that. Every one I've tried pins the document instead, so I'm wondering if they're mistaken. It does work on KDE.

Hold shift while dropping.

I've never once in all my years of using Windows dragged a file onto an application in the taskbar to open that file. I didn't even know that was a thing you could do until this post.

I use it a lot for file uploads in web browser.

A good (only?) workaround is using alt tab but if you have many open programs it can be quite annoying.

It used to not work for the longest time because Apple used to have a patent for it, which I presume expired.

I use it daily for copying files, since you can effectively select a window from behind other windows just by hovering over the task bar icon. It's gonna suck having to rearrange windows before this otherwise simple task can be completed.

Windows 11 really is shaping up to be the vista version. Look forward to windows 12 which will have all the good features without the annoying ones.

Microsoft really has a lock on the good-bad-good cadence.

I don't buy that "good-bad-good-bad" pattern that everyone references. It's a mildly funny observation, but it's hard to say that Windows 10 is really that good. It's more usable than Windows 8, but the bar was so low, that's not a very useful metric.

It added a lot more stability over win8 and removed a bunch of terrible UX. Additionally it added to a lot of the great ideas of windows 7. I can’t recall any off the top of my head, but I remember trying to do things in 7 and being surprised they weren’t possible.

I agree that win8 set a low bar, but so did vista, fact is 7 was much better and 10 follows that same progression.

Still tries to force cortana on me despite my computer not even having a mic. It places ads in the start menu. Heck, the start menu is basically completely useless. I've resorted to relying exclusively on search now, which means my start menu is a mess and if I can't remember the name of the app, I have to resort to using file explorer to attempt to locate it. I still can't for the life of me figure out how to change any of the system settings without fishing around. Every single time I have a bluetooth issue, it's 5+ minutes of poking around different menus to sort out where the issue is.

Case in point. Click start, settings, and look at the window that pops up. Where are the settings to add a new wifi AP? This is something you will do quite often if you have a laptop or tablet. Ohh wait, did you get the menu that actually has all the settings in it? Because there are two. Windows decides somewhat randomly which one to present you with. What sense does that make?

> Still tries to force cortana on me despite my computer not even having a mic.

For what it is worth, Cortana has been basically entirely turned off in either 20H1 or 20H2 on new installs.

> It places ads in the start menu.

It's less annoying about that if you pay the $99 for the upgrade from Home to Pro.

> Case in point. Click start, settings, and look at the window that pops up. Where are the settings to add a new wifi AP?

Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi > Show all available networks

Though that just opens the window for you that you'd get if you clicked the Network Indicator button directly on the Taskbar which is the fastest/direct path. (It wouldn't have occurred to me to try to path to it from the Settings app, though it is interesting that you can.)

> It's less annoying about that if you pay the $99 for the upgrade from Home to Pro.

I'm on pro. Have been since the start. It still shoves bing results and app suggestions and all sorts of other stuff into the start menu by default. I've long since turned all that stuff off, so maybe it's improved...

I haven't noticed anything of those sorts of suggestions on the Start Menu in a long while. Though I probably did turn things off once long ago. I also use a Microsoft Account to login to Windows and I've also heard that makes a difference sometimes in the number of "suggestions" that you see (in that it shows more for Local only accounts for some reason possibly as dumb as "has no way to remember what suggestions it has already shown to you").

> I've resorted to relying exclusively on search now

I'm surprised you're even able to make use of the search because that's also horrible and loves to swap out the result you wanted last second so you open up something else random. It's also incredibly slow and tries to hamfist bing search results and stupid suggestions to install apps instead of just searching your computer.

Now I use Everything (voidtools). And I put it as the first pinned item in my taskbar so I can do Win+1 to access it quickly.

>It added a lot more stability over win8

Did we use the same OS? I didn't really like the full screen app stuff but Windows 8 was fast and stable for me while Windows 10 to this day feels slower.

Who knows. It could even be reduce features simply in order to reduce bug (and potential bug) counts which occur every time they fiddle with the UI.

hmmph. annoying. It is the best way for me to keep default file associations while still easily using a different program to open a file.

Most common example is to keep ".jpg" default for the faster, normal case and drag the file to photoshop if I absolutely have to.

Dreading the future Win11 corporate laptops that I'll be assigned.

Hoping the myriad of public/private services I rely upon will have dropped the "Internet Explorer 11/Windows" requirement that keeps a single Windows PC lingering on my home network.

I'm sure we'll just see a fork, as in any healthy software ecosystem. :)

Welcome to the glorious future everyone, where our computers are less featureful than they were in the 1990s.

Could all of you "professional" software "engineers" out there please just stop sucking so damned hard? You're making me deeply ashamed to be a part of this industry.

Can you please follow the site guidelines? They include: "Please don't fulminate."

Also: "Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I worked on the Windows Core UX team. If you think this is an engineering led decision, you have had a different experience with large software organizations than I have.

Even with the Windows 8 UX changes, our most senior engineers were up in arms in open protest and they STILL went through with it.

This is a Product led decision.

>This is a Product led decision.

I've never worked at Microsoft, but have worked at other large software companies. This is 100% a design decision. Engineers like buttons, shortcuts, neat tricks, test tools, secret options, lots of menus, etc.

I also think this is a fairly sensible design decision.

I personally would expect dragging a file to the dock would put the file on the dock, rather than trying to open the file in whatever app you dragged it onto.

Yes, but even that is blocked (see the screenshot with the no dropping icon)

Ah yeah you are right, I misread that.

Initial designs, sure. When it comes to making trade-offs in features and functionality vs ship dates then that falls into the realm of a Product Manager.

For one, I doubt very much anyone told the developers of the new task bar that it shouldn't be movable to other screen edges. I'm confident that was a design decision by software engineers who deemed it too difficult or time consuming with no regard to how it would impact people who have used that feature since Windows 95.

But even if they had, I don't anyone gets a pass on building a crap product just because they happened to get paid to do so. If your situation is such that you can't risk your job by refusing to do it, you can at least own it and feel an appropriate amount of shame.

Then how about walking out en masse?

Either that or accept co-responsibility.

I no longer work on Windows or at Microsoft. I expect most engineers don't care enough about Windows to lose their livelihood over it. However many of us did leave the organization after that release.

What does that have to do with software engineers? I highly doubt any of the software engineers just up and decided to remove the feature one day on a whim. Someone outside of software engineering likely came up with the idea. Do you expect people to quit over removing drag and drop on the task bar?

At this point? Yes. They should care enough about computing to take a stand against dragging it backwards. But hell, they won't quit over knowingly and actively making everyone's lives worse and handing tracking information over to oppressive regimes, so I clearly expect too much from them.

If you want to feel really sad, go install a bootleg copy of 2000/XP on a vm and do some basic computering. Just opening the start menu may drive some of you to tears when you realize what we have lost.

Windows 7 style window management improvements and taskbar are things that I'm really missing when I use an XP VM because I've gotten so used to them. But the UX is clearly designed for high density and high productivity. Not like Windows 11.

Fear not, for the past is being rescued for the future in SerenityOS! (http://serenityos.org/)

I mean if you're dumb enough to tie yourself to garbage proprietary software that constantly sucks, has majority security flaws as features, removes features, spies on you, and charges you money to use it on every computer, then you're getting what you asked for and you just don't realize it.

At this point I'd pay a massive sum to have Win2k back. Easily the high point of OS design.

https://reactos.org

Thank you, this is a very interesting distro.. Wondering how open source it can really be if it's running Windows drivers under the hood?

ReactOS isn't a Linux distro, but a brave attempt to reimplement the full Windows ABI. When complete it will support both binaries and drivers designed for Windows.

If you're using XFCE: https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95

No version of Windows released in the 90s supported anything like this, and I'd love for you to give actual examples of any features that have been lost.

That being said, removing this feature is a terrible decision and I'm not happy to hear about it.

You could move the task bar to the sides or top of the screen in Windows 95. Don't just take my word for it: https://archive.org/details/win95_in_dosbox

I don’t remember any version of windows that supported this in the 1990s?

Actually, its the product managers. Us, software “professionals” dont even like windows. You are barking at the wrong tree.

"Don't blame us, we were just following orders!"

I realize you have caught the ire of the goderator and maybe offended a well-meaning MSFT dev, but I appreciate your diligence in attacking our kind for implementing bad features, you're not entirely wrong.

Is it because it now is using a web view instead? and it's too hard for the employees in charge to support native drag&drop? xD

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