Windows 11 is a good operating system, but it isn’t without its flaws. In fact, it’s received quite a bit of criticism due to many features that were removed from previous Windows versions. One notable example has to do with the taskbar, which lost a few features, including the ability to show individual windows and labels, and it forced you to group windows of the same app. Thankfully, Microsoft is finally adding taskbar ungrouping to Windows 11, meaning you can see individual windows and their labels directly on the taskbar.
Right now, this capability is only available to Windows Insiders in the Dev channel, and it’s still rolling out, so you may not see it right away. But if you want to enable this feature, you can do so. First, of course, you’ll need to sign up for the Windows Insider program and join the Dev channel, but once you’ve done that, you can follow the steps below.
Enabling taskbar ungrouping and labels in Settings
The process of enabling taskbar ungrouping in the Settings app is fairly straightforward assuming your PC has already received the feature. Here’s what you need to do:
- Right-click an empty area of the taskbar and choose Taskbar settings.
- Expand the Taskbar behaviors section at the bottom.
- Look for an option called Combine Taskbar buttons and hide labels and set it to Never if you want to see labels for every app window.
- You can also set it to When Taskbar is full so that buttons are only combined when you have no space for more apps on the taskbar.
- If you have multiple monitors, look for Combine Taskbar buttons and hide labels on other taskbars to apply the same setting to the taskbar on all your monitors.
- You can also enable the Show labels on Taskbar pins option, which enables labels for pinned apps. By default, labels are only shown for open apps.
Changes are applied automatically, and you should see them in real time. You can always head back to change the behavior.
What to do if you don’t see taskbar ungrouping in Settings
While Microsoft is starting to roll out support for taskbar ungrouping in the Windows 11 Dev channel, the company is still testing the feature with only a subset of Insiders, which means you may not see the options above even if you are enrolled. The feature is hidden for many users, but you can reveal it using an app called ViveTool, or an alternative called ViveTool GUI. The latter may be a bit more user-friendly, so that’s what we’re using. Here’s what you need to do:
- Download and install ViveTool GUI from GitHub. You can use either the portable version or the setup version.
- Run ViveTool GUI.
- Click the Manually change a feature button near the top.
- Enter 29785186 and click Perform action, then Activate Feature.
- You should see a confirmation message. Click Close.
You should now be able to see the options we described in the section above. You may want to restart your computer first to make sure everything is working properly.
And that’s all there is to it. The steps in the first section should apply to other Insider channels and to the stable releases of Windows 11 once this feature is more widely available. You also shouldn’t need to use ViveTool GUI once the feature is fully rolled out.
If you’d like to learn more about the features Windows Insiders can try right now, check out our article on the Windows 11 features in preview, which we keep updated every week. And if you want to learn about other Windows 11 features that make life a little easier, check out how to set up live captions.