Forum Discussion
How to let windows 11 "never combine taskbar buttons"?
- The November 2023 update added “never combined” mode on the taskbar for Windows 11. To find this feature, go to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar behaviors. Set Combine taskbar buttons and hide labels to Never. It also added a separate setting for turning this feature on for other taskbars when you use multiple monitors.
As with many other people I switched to using ExplorerPatcher, which was a great tool and gave me back everything that I wanted - never combine, Quick Launch, plus many more tweaks. Unfortunately when Windows 11 upgraded itself to 22H2, ExplorerPatcher would no longer work - it kept going through a loop whereby it would crash and automatically restart - my faster PC did so at a frequency of under 1 second per cycle. I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to have done something deliberately in order to break it.
Given that the Explorer is the primary user interface this rendered it impossible to interact with the system - I had to start in safe mode command line only in order to uninstall ExplorerPatcher and get control again.
So now I'm back where I started. The issue has been raised on ExplorerPatcher's Github site but surprisingly not by many people - I added my vote to it FWIW. All we can do now is wait and hope.
- What you will find is that explorer patcher will be have an update now or soon to fix this.
It will happen most times W11 updates and is very annoying and why lots of people no longer use it. It is as though MS do things in updates to stop it working.
I like some others now pay a few bucks for Start 11 or StartAllback as this never seems to happen with them. Best of luck
Hi ,
A Microsoft employee marked this answer as the best, so maybe this is a tip for users?
Re: How to let windows 11 "never combine taskbar buttons"? - Page 2 - Microsoft Community Hub
- The same exactly happened to me. I followed a more complex way to resolve it, I completely uninstalled the latest Win update (from the Safe Mode) and got back control, then I uninstalled EP and then I got the latest Win update (22H2). Finally, I downloaded the latest version of EP which was optimized for 22H2 ( 22621.1413.54.5) and everything worked fine. ExplorerPatcher works fine with the new update.
Lesson learned: Before any major Win update simply uninstall EP and reinstall it after the new Win update has been installed. Use always the latest EP version.
I hope this helped
