Windows 11 Ungroup Taskbar Icons

sIf you’re anything like the SCNet workers, upgrading to Windows 11 has been a great experience – except for one thing – the removal of the “Never Combine Taskbar Buttons” setting. This has infuriated us because many of us work with multiple windows like the Command prompt, VS Code, Excel, Browsers and so on and we like them nicely ordered. The removal of this option – quite frankly – causes RSI and lost productivity because there are several mouse hovers and clicks now required for each window swap. it’s the dumbest idea to remove the option completely.

We looked into various registry hacks and classic shell patches but they were all too invasive and also removed many of the Windows 11 improvements because they were essentially a “downgrade” to a Windows 10 taskbar. Our number #1 new feature that we wanted to keep was the Restore Application Windows which is very useful when you are undocking a laptop. It’s so irritating when you have to move and resize all your windows once you have docked back in.

To the rescue – we stumbled upon an open source project “ExplorerPatcher”  which is a non invasive explorer patch which restores the functionality, gives you the same Windows 11 look and adds a lot of extra bells and whistles.

Check it out here.