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Comment by AndroidKitKat | Hacker News Reader

Not going to install something that seems so vague, but I do use ExplorerPatcher [1] on my Windows 11 machines to basically re-create Windows 10 UI and fix all of the annoyances I have with Windows 11. I've got the old right click menu, the old task bar, the old alt-tab interface, pretty much the whole thing. Only reason I use Windows 11 over Windows 10 is because Windows 11 seems to handle my triple monitor setup better, especially when waking up from sleep.

[1] - https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher

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I installed Explorer Patcher on my non-technical sibling's computer after they upgraded to 11 and discovered the atrocity that's 11's taskbar. The main problem with Explorer Patcher is that it will sometimes completely break after a (forced) Windows update, causing your Desktop/Taskbar/everything to not display after a login. 2-3 times now I've had to remote into the box after having it boot in safe mode with networking, uninstall Explorer Patcher, verify that it was causing the problem, then reinstall the latest version. Rather annoying, but said sibling (understandably) hates the new taskbar.

Thanks. I keep my task bar on the left so that's the big thing keeping me in win 10.

You can have taskbar on left in Windows 11 as well.

Not without 3rd-party-tools.

There's a built-in option to align buttons center or left. No third-party tools necessary, unless you want something different than left or center. Or is this in reference to the entire bar? If so, was that possible in Win 10?

Yes, in all Windows version starting with probably 95 and until 11, you could put your start bar on any edge of the screen.

Yes, I move the whole taskbar to the left edge of the screen. Screens are wide, so I can dedicate like 1.5 inches of the left edge of the screen to just the taskbar with full text labels (I speak English, not pictogram) stacked one on top of the other, no combining. It's such a nice workflow I'm surprised it didn't become common when 16x9 screens became dominant.

Yeah, I mean a fully vertical taskbar. It’s more efficient for widescreen monitors, as you waste less horizontal space.

You're misunderstanding. We like the taskbar along the left (vertical) edge, not the bottom (horizonal) edge. You're thinking of alignment.

AFAIK it doesn’t support that. The only tool I know that does is proprietary (but cheap) and closed source: StartAllBack https://www.startallback.com/

Thank you for sharing this!!

Doing this Monday when I get back into the office.

Plus for $5, I find it quite cheap!

Just in case you hadn’t seen sibling, ExplorerPatcher also seems to support it, just for some reason they don’t advertise it ;)

It does support that. I'm using it like that on two machines.

interesting, I couldn’t find it under any of the feature descriptions.

edit: Found it inside github issues, weird to omit this from the feature list.

Back then, I chose SAB specifically because of this feature.

Just curious: does Alt+Tab work for you?

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