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As part of the ongoing story, it introduces a long-awaited capability, allowing the taskbar to be moved freely to the edges of the screen once again. A few days ago, Microsoft dropped a fresh Windows 11 preview patch on the Insider Beta channel that fulfills a promise made to the user base.
Industry observers note that the implementation of a movable taskbar was said to be a “top priority,” but there hadn’t been much information on it apart from a dev leak in April. Back in February, Microsoft unveiled that this capability would be coming after five long years of user requests.
According to the latest update, in Windows 10, it was taken for granted that users could freely choose whether the taskbar sat on the bottom, top, left, or right edge of the screen. In Windows 11, this capability was taken away and the taskbar was forced into a fixed bottom position. Now, with build 26220.9022 of Windows 11, Insiders are able to try the movable taskbar for themselves.
According to the latest update, it felt like a meaningless change that came at the expense of Windows 11’s personalization. Now, almost five years after the arrival of Windows 11, this change has finally been reversed. Microsoft faced a lot of criticism for that decision, especially because there was no real reason why the taskbar had to be fixed there.
As part of the ongoing story, the taskbar will also take up less space, as the devs have adjusted its height and the sizes of app icons. You’ll still be able to group them together. A few other limitations and issues—such as when using touch gestures or integrating Copilot—will likely be resolved in the next test phase. Once the option to move the taskbar is enabled, it can be changed under Settings → Personalization → Taskbar.
According to the latest update, microsoft usually rolls out changes from a Beta version to all general users within a month or so. Therefore, we expect it to hit regular Windows 11 PCs on September’s Patch Tuesday at the most recent. Currently, the movable taskbar is only available to Windows 11 Insiders on the Beta channel.
According to the latest update, until then, we can at least be pleased that Microsoft has kept its word and listened to the wishes of the Windows user base—even if the implementation took a bit longer than one might expect.
In a fresh development, further reading: Microsoft’s next priority is making Windows 11 faster on PCs with only 8GB RAM.
In a fresh development, this article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and localized from German.
The report highlights that after studying communication science, she went straight into a job at PCMagazin and Connect Living. Since then, she has been writing about everything to do with PCs and technology topics, and has been a permanent editor at our German sister site PC-WELT since May 2024. Laura is an enthusiastic gamer as well as a movie and TV fan.