Microsoft reportedly moving the taskbar from explorer.exe

Mar 26, 2021 18:24 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is working on several big changes for Windows 10 in the long term, and while everybody expects the fall update landing this year to be the one introducing them all, there’s a chance we might have to wait a little bit longer to actually get our hands on everything the company is experimenting with these days.

One of the most interesting changes that Microsoft is already working on is giving the Windows 10 taskbar a DLL of its own, essentially separating it from explorer.exe.

The change, which was spotted by Twitter user @thebookisclosed, is already live in the latest preview builds of Windows 10, though at this point, it doesn’t seem to be complete.

“The taskbar is being moved from Explorer.exe into Taskbar.dll. Surreal to see this get relocated after decades. Right now Explorer still contains the code, but it's possible to switch to the DLL implementation. There's still some odd bugs such as semi-broken search box UI,” the tweet reads.

This is quite a big change for several reasons.

First and foremost, because the taskbar now comes with its own DLL, Microsoft should be able to improve it at a much faster pace without having to worry about any problems caused to explorer.exe. So in theory, we could get a taskbar overhaul much sooner though this is something that Microsoft is obviously yet to confirm.

And second of all, by separating the taskbar and the explorer.exe process, Windows 10 as a whole should benefit from improved stability and reliability, as killing one without the other should totally be possible.

Right now, whenever explorer.exe crashes, the taskbar is automatically killed too, so once the aforementioned change happens, users should be able to restart any of them without any changes made to the other.