14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 11 is introducing all kinds of changes, some of which are a little bit more subtle and users come across them as they explore the new operating system.
One of them, for example, concerns the Task Manager, a must-have tool that pro users turn to in order to deal with hanging processes or keep an eye on the performance of the system.
In the previous Windows versions, including in Windows 10, launching the Task Manager was as simple as right-clicking the taskbar, as the context menu included a shortcut specifically for this purpose.
In Windows 11, however, this option is gone, as Microsoft has disabled the taskbar context menu to keep things as simple as possible.
How to launch the Task Manager in Windows 11
But the Task Manager didn’t go anywhere in Windows 11, and you can still launch it with just a few clicks by simply right-clicking the Start menu. So instead of right-clicking the taskbar, you just need to do the whole thing on the Start menu, with a Task Manager shortcut now placed in this menu.
At the same time, you can also turn to the dedicated hotkey in Windows 11 for the whole thing, as pressing CTRL + Shift + Esc launches the Task Manager as well.
A suggestion published in the Windows Feedback Hub calls for Microsoft to bring back the shortcut in the taskbar context menu, and while the company says it’s looking into the feedback it received, the aforementioned alternative should come in handy anyway.
“Thank you so much for giving us your feedback. While we'll continue to use your feedback to guide the future of features like this, currently on Windows 11, you can right-click the Start menu button to quickly open the Task Manager. In addition you can also press CTRL + SHIFT + ESC to open Task Manager directly,” Jen Gentleman, a Microsoft engineer, explained in a reply in the Feedback Hub.