14 DAY TRIAL // The Windows 10 taskbar remains an essential part of the entire experience in this operating system, and along with the Start menu, it’s one of the key elements making Windows as a whole a familiar place for everybody.
The Windows taskbar, however, hasn’t evolved too much over the years, and if anything, Microsoft only brought small refinements every now and then to align its look and feel with the rest of the operating system.
For example, the taskbar received a search box in Windows 10, a feature that was part of the Cortana experience on the desktop, but on other hand, this update quickly became one of the first things users disable after installing the OS.
At the same time, the taskbar has also been improved with a more polished look that supports both light and dark themes, something that made its way to Windows 10 as well. So the purpose here was to make the entire experience more consistent from one end to another.
Now Microsoft is working on another small refinement for the taskbar that essentially comes down to a personalized icon setup that is offered based on how you configured Windows 10. For example, if you pair your Android device with Windows 10 using the Your Phone app, its icon is pinned to the taskbar by default.
This is just an experiment that Microsoft runs through the Windows Insider program for the time being, but there’s a good chance it makes its way to the production channel at some point in the future too.
“We want to help customers get the most out of their PCs from day one, and that starts with offering a cleaner, more personalized, out-of-box experience to give you the content you want and less clutter. This provides us with a flexible, cloud-driven infrastructure to test customer reception of default Taskbar content and tailor these layouts based on user and device signal,” Microsoft says.
“We will evaluate the performance of individual default properties, monitoring diagnostic data and user feedback to assess an audience’s reception. Using this information, we will tune default layouts to minimize clutter and perceptions of bloatware.”
However, while it’s a good thing that Microsoft is further polishing the taskbar, there are two different features that should be added in Windows 10, both based on user feedback: full transparency and centered icons.
A taskbar featuring full transparency is something that still happens occasionally in Windows 10 due to what’s believed to be a graphics driver bug. And by the looks of things, some users like this so much that they’re looking into ways to reproduce the bug and keep the taskbar with full transparency on their desktops for as long as possible.
In the meantime, third-party apps have eventually made this possible on demand, and given how popular this cool visual effect it, there’s no doubt Microsoft should add it to Windows 10 natively too.
And then, the centered icons, despite being a rather small change, completely change the look and feel of the Windows 10 desktop. And when paired with the full transparency, such a tweak turns Windows 10 into a much more modern operating system – some people claim this pushes it closer to macOS, as the centered icons give the feeling of a floating dock.
Again, there are apps that can do this, such as TaskbarX (previously known as FalconX), but Microsoft should offer all these tweaks in the Settings app right there in Windows 10, thus making it easier for everyone to enable them.
Without a doubt, such customization options shouldn’t be enabled by default, but at least, they should be there for power users and everyone else who just wants a modern taskbar experience on the taskbar.
Of course, nobody should hold their breath for anything like this to happen in Windows 10, or at least, not overnight. The next Windows 10 feature update is version 20H2, and it’s once again expected to be a minor release focused mostly on under-the-hood changes rather than on new features.