How to let windows 11 "never combine taskbar buttons"?

Bronze Contributor

How to let windows 11 "never combine taskbar buttons"?

1,317 Replies
I'm having the same problem.... the lack of this option, it's unproductive and it's making me think go back to installing Windows 10
Please bring back never combine option! It's unproductive! I have installed windows 10 again. OMG Microsoft!
There is a hack available to resolve this, but it forces the classic start menu.
Do a web search, you'll find it.

Add me to the list of disgruntled users, Microsoft. Allow us to never combine taskbar tabs again, please!

@huali1405 The "Never Combine" option needs to come back. Currently the Win11 Taskbar is a boring waste of space on the left and right of the centered icons.......(unless 1. Users fill up the entire taskbar with Shortcuts, 2. Microsoft brings back "Never Combine,' and/or 3. Microsoft adds more features to the Taskbar (more Lists-e.g. Recent, Scrolling Tickers, Multiple Customizable Start Menus???)

Using 3rd party tools to bring it back breaks a bunch of other things. smiley shortcut, snipping tool, etc... Still trying to use it, but experience is certainly broken. Just bring the ungroup option back.
Please bring back never combine option. It's not possible to multitask without this option.

For god sake Microsoft, return the NEVER COMBINE option in the taskbar.

1st, it's killing my productivity. can't switch between Visual Studio instances fast

2nd, I can't see any error or exception messages when happen if I was working on different app.

I will never upgrade to windows 11 until this feature is back.
i dont understand why they hide apps like that like we are using small screens or a tablet it is 2021 everything is 1080p or 4k resolution or even higher so why is there any need to combine apps like they do is beyond me. never combine like windows xp & 7 is the way forward. combining apps is good for 720p and lower resolutions screens. have an option or addon to download Microsoft
Yes give us back the choice to never combine taskbar icons. just ridiculous and annoying that MS should dictate the terms how you want these.
Yes! I'm having the same problem! It's unproductive!

Win11 has nothing new except the stupid start menu. Does Microsoft Windows team know anything about UX?

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They just copied Mac style to make it 'beautiful' and don't care anything about users

This is a joke, I want to buy a new laptop and I don’t search anymore for the hardware specs, I think this is awful and unproductive feature that it’s missing. Microsoft UI Designers we are not all using Windows like a Tablet. I am software engineer and with a quick test it will cause me to lose approximately 30’ of my working time every day, think about it. Maybe I will pay to buy Windows 10 again ;)
Also, the drag and drop feature don't work with the new taskbar! Microsoft, WTF is this joke? How can I drag my pictures in Photoshop for example, or in any other app?

@huali1405 I TOTALLY agree.  I was very disappointed to find that this was no longer an option.  Setting the tabs to Never Combine was the first thing I would do when installing Windows.  Removing that option is very inconvenient.

I am about to uninstall Windows 11 because of this. Bring back the option to not combine taskbar windows.
Yes this is stupid. Microsoft should think about the productivity too.
I'm a software developer, choosing Windows at work. I won't upgrade to Windows 11 if this option is not available because it would reduce my productivity greatly.

Microsoft, it's OK if you want to dumb down your UI for the average/small screen users, but you're turning your geek users away.
Taskbar and start menu became too simple, not customizable, not usable. The same kind of interface problems happened with windows 8. I thought that it was old story...