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Windows 10 Taskbar Customization: The Complete Guide

The Windows 10 taskbar is one of the least-appreciated aspects of the Windows user interface. It’s there, it’s reliable, and it does exactly what it’s supposed to.

However, this doesn’t mean you have to stick with the way it works by default. You have plenty of options, both built-in and through third-party software, that allow you to tweak many facets of the taskbar.

Let’s look at the many ways to customize the Windows 10 taskbar, plus some third-party tools for more control.

We’ll start with the basics. In the Settings menu under Settings → Personalization → Taskbar, you’ll find a slew of customization options related to this element.

First up is Lock the taskbar. With this enabled, you can’t drag the taskbar to change its on-screen position or rearrange toolbar elements. It’s a good idea to keep this enabled unless you want to make changes.

Next you’ll see a pair of related options: Automatically hide the taskbar in desktop mode and Automatically hide the taskbar in tablet mode. With either of these enabled, your taskbar will slide off-screen except when your mouse is near it or you swipe a finger from that direction.

Moving on, you’ll see a Use peek to preview the desktop… option. With this enabled, you can move your mouse to the very bottom-right corner of the screen to “see through” all open windows. The keyboard shortcut Win + Comma achieves the same effect.

If you prefer the Command Prompt over PowerShell, make sure the Replace Command Prompt with Windows PowerShell… option is unchecked. This changes what utility shows up when you right-click the Start button or press Win + X.

Turn Show badges on taskbar buttons on and you’ll see, for example, how many unread emails you have in the Mail app’s icon.

You can also select the taskbar location on screen in this menu. Most people are used to it at the bottom, but you can move it to the top, left, or right side if you want to try something different.

By default, Windows 10 simply shows one icon for each program you have open, regardless of how many instances are running. You can split this into separate entries for each process, plus add the title text to the taskbar, by changing the Combine taskbar buttons setting.

The default is Always, hide labels. Choose Never to keep them separate all the time, or When taskbar is full to split them unless there are too many icons. This style resembles the taskbar in Windows Vista and earlier.

The System Tray, also known as the notification area, is the group of icons at the far right of your taskbar. It holds icons for programs running in the background, along with Windows system icons like volume and the clock.

Click the Select which icons appear on the taskbar text to take a look at the list. Toggle the slider to On for any apps you want to always show, and Off if you don’t want them appearing.

Icons you’ve turned off will appear when you click the overflow arrow in the System Tray section of the taskbar. If you find a lot of apps here that you don’t want to run all the time, you should manage your Windows startup items

The Windows 10 startup folder lets you manage which programs run at startup. Here’s how to find the startup folder and manage its programs.

You can also choose to Turn system icons on or off. This lets you hide default Windows icons (such as the network icon and volume slider) from the System Tray.

If you use two or more monitors with your computer, you can change how the taskbar works across the screens. Disable Show taskbar on all displays to only display it on your primary monitor.

When the taskbar is enabled across monitors, you have two additional options underneath this. Show taskbar buttons on has three choices:

Main taskbar and taskbar where window is open will show all icons on your main monitor. However, other monitors will only show taskbar icons for programs currently open on that display.

Below this, you’ll see a Combine buttons on other taskbars option. This works the same way as the combination option discussed above.

When you set up Windows 10 for the first time, you’ll see a People icon on the taskbar’s right side. This feature is supposed to make it easy to message your frequent contacts across various apps. In reality, though, hardly any services support it, so it’s effectively pointless.

Because nobody really uses the People option, we recommend disabling Show contacts on the taskbar on this page. Doing so gives you more space for icons you’ll actually use.

Windows 10 lets you change the taskbar color to whatever you like, but the option isn’t on the same page as everything above. Instead, head to Settings → Personalization → Colors.

Here, use the Choose your color dropdown to select between Dark and Light modes (or Custom to pick different options for apps and UI elements). You can also disable the Transparency effects …

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