7+ Taskbar Tweaker
7+ Taskbar Tweaker allows you to configure various aspects of the Windows taskbar.
Most of the configuration options it provides can’t be tweaked using the taskbar properties or the registry.
The tweaker is designed for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.
Download
7tt_setup.exe (1.78 MB, changelog)
Latest version: v5.15.1
Note: The installer can be used to extract a portable version. Refer to the FAQ below for details.
Beta version
7tt_setup_beta.exe (1.79 MB, changelog)
Latest beta version: v5.15.1.2
More info about beta versions.
✖
Windows 11 Support Status
- 7+ Taskbar Tweaker doesn’t support the Windows 11 taskbar, and probably never will. See this blog post for more details.
- Some of the tweaks are available in Windows 11 as Windhawk mods. See here for the list of mods, and vote for missing mods that you’d like to see implemented. Read more about Windhawk here.
- 7+ Taskbar Tweaker works on Windows 11 with the old taskbar which can be restored with third party tools. See this blog post for more details.
Demo video
Here is a video that demonstrates some of the tweaks:
Source code
https://github.com/m417z/7-Taskbar-Tweaker
FAQ
Q: Which registry keys does 7+ Taskbar Tweaker modify? I don’t need extra processes in my system.
A: The only registry keys the tweaker modifies are its own settings. There are no registry keys for the options it provides. The tweaker does that by injecting a DLL to explorer, hooking/subclassing/some other methods of the dark side.
As for extra processes, the tweaker is a native program, and is very lightweight. It shouldn’t slow down your system, and uses an extremely small amount of memory. Also, you can hide the tray icon if you want.
In case you want to remove the tweaker’s settings from the registry, look for them here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\7 Taskbar Tweaker
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run (“7 Taskbar Tweaker” value)
P.S. if you’re a programmer, you might want to take a look at the 7+ Taskbar Tweaking Library.
Q: My antivirus complains about 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.
A: It’s a false positive. I guarantee that the tweaker binaries (and any other files on this site, unless specifically noted) are 100% clean.
Also remember that the tweaker injects into explorer and modifies its memory, which is indeed suspicious.
Q: Can I Group/Combine/Label only some of the items on the taskbar?
A: Yes, use Taskbar Inspector.
Q: May I use 7+ Taskbar Tweaker in a commercial environment?
A: Yes, feel free to use it wherever you want.
Q: Where is the portable version?
A: When installing the tweaker, choose the Portable type of install, as shown on the image below.
The portable version will be extracted to the selected folder.
Note: If the tweaker is already installed on your computer, the option won’t be visible. You can launch the setup with the /portable command line switch to force a portable installation.
Q: I want to report a bug/suggest a feature! What is the best way to do it?
A: Post it on the UserEcho page.
Q: I want to translate 7+ Taskbar Tweaker to my language.
A: The archive below contains the files needed to be translated.
Please read readme.txt before proceeding.
7tt_translate.zip (758.63 kB)
If you are brave enough to translate the help file, contact me for the required software and files.
Tags: 7+ taskbar tweaker
This is what I was looking for but I miss one thing and it’s minimizing by middle-clicking on the icon. Can you please add this feature ?
Please Remove Extra Spacing from the Tray/Notification Area.
I think it would be a great idea to add an option that removes all of the extra spacing between the icons in the tray/notification area. With the option selected, the amount of spacing in the tray would return to that of the previous versions of Windows.
Thanks for all your work so far!
Hi there,
nice program, very useful.
However I have problems with the program exiting without me noticing. Some time after it was started, it seems to exit on it’s own. No Taskbar Icon, no functionality.
Until it is started again. I tried to install it as a service so it would get restartet if it exits, but had no luck.
Are you aware of such a problem or is there any way to start the program as a service?
Help much appreciated.
Best regards.
No, I’m not aware of such a problem. Any ideas of how can it be reproduced?
Hi again,
the funny thing is that since I’ve wrote that comment everything is working fine.
But I could swear that in the months of using your tool it happened quite often.
I rarely do restarts btw. My usual uptime is from security update to security update. (monthly interval)
I’m trying to get a better grip on the problem and will report back.
Thanks for the respond so far.
Great program, thx!
Wonderful little tweaker app. Thank you. This (and countless other mods) almost make Win7 bearable.
Fantastic program, many thanks! Relieved that classic right-click context menu can be brought back…
Great tweaker. Like someone mentioned before, it makes no sense to group taskbar buttons by application since that’s not how most people work. We work by tasks that determine the applications not the other way around.
Disabling the group by application id solved 2 problems for me:
1 – knowing where that last window button is on the taskbar since with grouping it could be anywhere depending on where the group was. Now it’s at the end (unless i decide otherwise).
2 – being able to order the taskbar buttons any way i want to and not only by whole groups.
Amazing that an improvement over XP (where you had to close and reopen windows to define the order) came with a tweak to change windows 7 default behaviour. Unexcusable that microsoft didn’t include an option to disable this in the taksbar properties.
I got ahead of myself, there’s a significant drawback: if you close 7 Taskbar Tweaker the dumb grouping behaviour comes back. Why? Isn’t it some registry key that controls this? It sucks having one more app running permanently and making windows start even slower.
No, it isn’t a registry key – Microsoft didn’t provide even this. The tweaker injects into explorer to disable grouping.
The tweaker is a native program, and is very lightweight. It shouldn’t slow down windows startup, and uses an extremely small amount of memory. You can just hide the tray icon and forget about it.
thanks. Hopefully MS will launch soon an SP and fix this and windows search that is another major annoyance in win 7.
Disable Color Hot-Track.
I hate it so much. Hard to know which one is a active windows.
PS: I use all features of your program.
Thanks a millions.
Do you know of a way to disable thumbnail preview but keeping a list instead? Like it is when you disable desktop-design at all…
http://rammichael.com/7-taskbar-tweaker#comment-170
AWESOME!!!!! tho its kinda dumb i need an app to be able to move taskbar items around with out them sticking together.
but still U ROCK!
Hey your 7 Taskbar Tweaker is indispensable. I have a little feature request. Currently, I pin lots of shell locations and special folders to Windows Explorer jump list. But even inside a jumplist, right clicking on any jumplist item which is a shell folder (such as Recycle Bin) shows a reduced context menu but Shift+right clicking shows the real context menu. Can you make just right clicking on such jump list items (or all jump list items) work as Shift+right click?
Hi,
With Windows XP and Vista we used to be able to make side toolbars. It means we can create a folder and drag and drop it to one of the three sides (top, left, or right). This automatically creates a toolbar where which we can create links to folders or programs and have easy convenient access.
Windows 7 officially removed such feature.
Any way to get it back ?
Thanks 🙂
Nope, but I’ve seen a gadget that does exactly that:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Windows-Widgets/System-Utilities/App-Launcher-Vista-Gadget.shtml
Haven’t tried it, but it looks nice.
Love you man!!!!!!!
You saved me!:)
this tools give the way to fix the most stupid issues with TabskBar….
One more issue is D&D – sometimes click doesnt waork, coz it think that D&D going to be 🙁
Thanks a lot :))))) !!!!!!!
This app is all sorts of awesome, thank you!
A problem with the Windows 7 taskbar is that even if Quick launch toolbar is manually created and enabled, it gets disabled after every restart. Vista added a new ITrayDeskBand interface that lets you turn taskbar bands on and off. Can 7TaskbarTweaker enable Quick launch at startup using this interface?
Hello and thanks for this.
I’m on a new install of 7 Home Premium and ‘disable’ seems to work fine.
Can I ask, why do we need to start your utility with Windows to maintain the setting? Is it because 7 otherwise resets or deletes something in the registry every time it starts?
Thanks a lot,
Lee
UK
See here:
http://rammichael.com/7-taskbar-tweaker#comment-220
Been looking for a tool like this for a while now. Too bad it isn’t based on registry tweaks tho. Microsoft really messed up on this one.
See here:
http://rammichael.com/7-taskbar-tweaker#comment-220
To be clear: There are NOT SUCH registry hacks! Thus, the application MUST be native!
AVG Identity protection just identified 7 taskbar tweaker as an unknown threat of severe level… Do you know why?
See here:
http://rammichael.com/about#comment-235
I love this tool. 9 out of 10.
It would be TOTALLY excellent if I could specify executable names that would never be grouped. So the much desired option to be in control of which apps get grouped / not grouped finally becomes a reality in Windows 7.
Thanks for the work you did on this, it’s appreciated!
This was exactly what I needed! Thank you!!!
I just made a couple of suggestions on your uservoice page (single, double, middle clicks on taskbar itself; scroll wheel over taskbar).
I have a question; when you click and drag a program’s taskbar footprint away from the screens edge you get the jumplist, the middle button still performs this same action; would it be possible to give middle-button-dragging a separate function such as minimizing (even when the window is not selected, and entire program groups too)?
I currently have to triple-click a non-active program to minimize it and I don’t think there’s an easy way to minimize an entire group.
The uservoice suggestions are nice, but it becomes less handy when the taskbar is full.
You can go down to two clicks for minimizing if you disable jump lists 🙂
This is my setup:
right click – standard menu
grouping – default (combine when taskbar is full)
dropping – open with
middle click – close window
left click group – cycle windows
Right click jump lists are off, but I still have to triple click; and I like getting the jump lists with left click dragging.
I use a double width taskbar so I almost never run out of space. That’s why I like the idea of clicks on the taskbar, it would also be good for those that don’t usually have a ton of programs open.
I used to use ‘XMouse Button Control’ on XP but it’s not compatible with Win7_x64. It had the show desktop on middle click feature (+ some other 7TT features); 7TT seems like the perfect app to pick up features in that vein.
I love this! 😀
The fact that I couldn’t ungroup items from the same app was the something that really bugged me in Windows 7. Much thanks! Awesome tweak 🙂
Thank you very much for your program!!!
It is running and it help me very much in my jobs. I love it.
Great Applications, I found it right after I got Win7 and discovered this middle-click new instance thing.
I see there have been many feature requests, so I think I’ll add mine, see if you like it.
Basically, it would be handy to have the ability to include other mouse buttons (for 4+ button mice) to be configured.
For example, although I would love to have my middle-click-close ability back, it would be sad to lose its old functionality.
Would it be possible to add more buttons?
i.e. Mouse3 press closes windows. Mouse4 opens new instance.
Thanks for the free app
Magnificient! Just what I have been looking for! How does it work trough the system?
This is a wonderful app; thanks very much for your work on it! I was just upgraded (against my will) from XP to Windows 7 and the taskbar grouping has been impeding my productivity. I often have 10-20 terminal emulator windows open at a time, and the order in which they are listed is very important as I have to quickly switch back and forth between them. Even with the “never combine” setting enabled, the new taskbar will reorder those terminal windows on the taskbar as it likes, causing me to completely lose track of which ones i’m working with. Extremely frustrating! But your fix seems to work perfectly. Thank you.
I love this app and moment i found it on the net I was so happy i would gladly let you date my sister.
Windows 7 is so frustrating. Step backwards in every sense. I know cross OS talk`s are considered flaming but Mac OS (which Win 7 try to steal bit of thunder) is made in that way so that even ppl with IQ 70 can use it. If you need only to use your computer via mouse Win 7 is great, but counter productive (same as OS X). But on Win ppl are used to use keyboard more and grouping and pinning is nonsense. Sorting apps in my taskbar is worst nightmare for anyone who uses more then one instance of same program.
I personaly open 10-15 (my taskbar is 3 rows high) firefox (2-15 tabs each), image apps, 3d apps, video editing apps and other essential and non essential apps. Now … when Win7 sorts those insane amount of windows I am used to visually remember location on taskbar it takes much longer to locate one im looking for by moving the mouse to see preview panels (alt tab rule, but OS X and now Win 7 generation dont know what it does).
My suggestion is to make your tweaker force vista or even better XP taskbar back to win 7. With Quicklaunch and without pinned icons. It would improve productivity for us poor saps who are used to XP or Vista.
Thing you have inside tweaker now as it is is perfect. This would only make it even more popular 🙂 Instant USABLE Windows tweaker 🙂
Thank you for your effort so far.
I cannot agree more, win7 taskbar is not designed for productivity. I have many windows open, and visually locate the right one. Another counter productive feature of Win7 taskbar is the overshininess! as opposed to XP the active window is not darkened/pushed but a stupid glow is added to it!!!! Very very hard to pin point among so many different instances.
Win7 is designed for below average users, with stupid popups and extra click click clicks needed for a task that should take at most one click or shortcut.
Great app but I have a question. Where is the app supposed to be installed. I had it in the route of C:\ on my Windows 7 notebook and set to under settings to run at startup but I have to click on it to get it to start as Windows starts up. Am I doing something wrong?
I copied it to C:\Program Files\7 Taskbar Tweaker\ and set it to run at startup, and it works as expected.
Maybe the route of C:\ does not work because of UAC settings, so you may want to try and move it to a different folder.
I love this program. LOVE it. Windows 7 is now fully usable without the annoying garbage solved by using this program.
I’ve been using this utility (and also promoting it on my blog) for almost a year now. Most of the time it works great, but it does seem to have a bug in it. For no apparent reason, the entry for a window will suddenly move to the end of the other windows. I’m not 100% sure, but I think it is usually (or possibly always) a FireFox window that does this. I am using a FireFox add-on that allows me to move my tabs about in FireFox, and I wonder if somehow that is interfering with Taskbar Tweaker. Also, I rarely shut down my computer, putting it to sleep instead, and I’ve discovered that problems start to occur the longer I do that. Despite these problems, I love this utility. It has amazed me for over 20 years that Microsoft doesn’t seem to be able to design user-friendly programs, so that utilities like this are necessary.
I’m pretty sure it’s a windows/firefox issue, which also happens without the tweaker. Firefox is well known for it’s memory leaks (especially when used with add-ons), and that’s why it happens more often the more you use it: firefox uses more memory, becomes slower and less responsive, and it’s windows hang more often.
That’s, in fact, the reason i switched to chrome, although it still lacks some of the things firefox has, like a Live HTTP Headers alternative.
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!
Thank you 😀
The windows 7 taskbar(right click) is not only ugly, it reduces functionality compared to all previous operating systems.
You are a hero
Hi RaMMichael,
I just noticed today that the latest AVG antivirus detects 7 taskbar tweaker as malware.
I’d be glad if you’ll report it as a false positive to the AVG team.
Found this today and one more annoyance in 7 was checked out from my list. Autoarrange windows in the taskbar was a pain.
Any chances that you may implement choosing multiple windows by control clicking on them like in XP ? Is it even possible ?
I already love the middle-click close option of this nifty tool, but one thing I did not manage to achieve (or maybe I misunderstood) was to (un)group specific programs (by filepath for example).
Basically I only want to group selected programs, such as Firefox or Live Messenger for example, all others should have descriptive texts and not group at all.
This would be similar to Firefox 4’s upcoming App-Tabs feature.
Grouping programs individually is not available yet, but planned:
http://tweaker.uservoice.com/forums/73857-general/suggestions/1022451-labeling-grouping-by-application-individually?ref=title
OK great, I thought this feature line meants it and I just didn’t find it.
“- Disable grouping of windows by file path or application id.”
Hopefully you’ll find a way to implement it, I believe every Windows 7 user would use this feature 🙂
Holy crap, thank you! Those thumbnails were bugging the $#!% out of me.
Hi,
I love this app. Thank you very much for creating it. It makes Win7 taskbar a great deal better. One feature would make it allmost perfect.
I have two monitors and I use Ultramon (great app by the way) to extend taskbar to all monitors. I have configured it to show taskbar icon only in that monitor where app resides. Unfortunately middle click close does not work with Ultramon taskbar. Taskbar Shuffle had support for it in WinXP.
Is it possible to implement support for Ultramon in Taskbar Tweaker?
I have only one monitor, and I’m not familiar with Ultramon. Is there a way for me to emulate the double-monitor environment?
I don’t believe such program exists. Any virtual desktop software includes taskbar on the bottom of the screen. They do not allow virtual “extended” desktops.
But if you ever decide to implement support for Ultramon, I’m happy to test it for you. Send me email if such need arises.
I’d also love UltraMon support. It basically adds independent taskbars to each monitor. So if you moved a window to a second monitor, it would disappear from the taskbar on the first monitor and appear on the second monitor’s taskbar. Taskbar Tweaker doesn’t affect any of Ultramon’s additional taskbars.
Taskix + UltraMon really helped my productivity in Vista. Taskix affected ALL taskbars. Since moving to Windows 7, I’ve been dying to find a replacement for Taskix with Taskbar Tweaker being the closest, but it doesn’t affect any taskbar but the main one.
Well, read the message you replayed to…
lHi Michael
7 Taskbar tweaker is great.
I have a suggestion that should be trivial for you to add, and would be great to use.
I use the option “Left click to cycle through Windows”, and I prefer to keep Middle click for “New program instance”. However, I want to use Middle click for close program at the same time.
So, my suggestion is to allow a keyboard keystroke + mouse click as an alternative action. This can be implemented for all the option available.
Example:
Middle click = New program instance.
Ctrl + Middle click = Close Window.
In this way, I can use left click to cycle and Ctrl + Middle click to immediately close the window without moving my mouse anywhere.
Thank you very much.
wickyd
Hi Michael
I need to expand on my last comment. I now see that “Middle click Close window” only works when there is only one instance of that window.
If there are multiple instances, like multiple explorer windows open, then “Middle click Close window” does not work. If pressed, it displays the thumbnail preview.
So, my suggestion is that “Middle click Close window” must close the active window.
Thank you.
wickyd
Just a thank you. These thumbnails have been driving me crazy for a year.
Perfect application – small, efficient, and does what it was designed to perfectly
this is one of the “must have” applications for Windows 7
Great Job!
(no suggestions – I like it the way that it is)
Hi there. I’ve been using this piece of software about a year now, and I really couldn’t live without it. The default Windows 7 behaviour is so illogical. Thanks a lot!
I have one idea though, that would help me (and hopefully others) out a lot when having multiple windows open in the same group. When you left mouse click a grouped button, I would like all the windows of this group to open up in the state they were in before they got unfocused. By state I mean minimized/maximized/on top/on bottom/etc.
It’s a little hard to explain, but I will give you an example so you can understand it better.
Let’s say I have three PDF-files open, each in it’s own window. One is minimized, a second is maximized, and a third is windowed hovering above the second (maximized) window. The third window is in focus.
Next, I open my webbrowser. After a while I want to open the PDF-windows again. So I click the grouped PDF-button. Here comes the trick. The PDF files appears exactly as they did before I opened my webbrowser. In other words, by one click, the second PDF-window is maximized and the third is put on top of that.
Clicking on a focused group button should cycle between the windows like the option you already have in 7TT.
I think this would be the most logical and user friendly way to navigating the task bar, and actually should have been the default in Windows 7 from day 1.
Thanks for taking the time on reading this and making such a great application. Hope you understood my feature request, if not I’ll gladly try to make you understand better 🙂
I tried it and it worked o.k. but I have had to uninstall it.
It is currently detected as Malware by Malware Bytes, AVG and others.
What is going on in the backgound with this little app?
It’s a false positive, read more about it here:
http://rammichael.com/about#comment-235
Michael above has a great idea!
One of the reasons I don’t use grouped taskbar buttons is because the feature Michael says is not part of Windows! I agree that clicking a grouped button should restore the window states of the group members.
Currently, Control-clicking already changes the focus of the group. In old Windows versions, clicking a taskbar button minimized the window and clicking it again restored the window. Maybe it should be the same here except minimizing the whole group/restoring the whole group. It may also be easier to program since the control-clicking to switch group focus is already part of windows 7.
#1. Clicking the taskbar group while unfocused restores the group to the previous state.
#2. Control-Clicking the taskbar group while focused cycle the focus of the group members as it is now.
#3. Clicking the focused group will minimize the entire group. If it is clicked again, the group is restored as in #1 above.
The roles of #2 and #3 could also be switched to be how Michael originally suggested:
#2. Click focused group: cycle focused windows of group
#3. Control-Click focused group: Minimize all group members
I don’t know which would be better for Click/Control-Click functionality. After a bit of use, maybe it would be obvious which is used more often – cycle group focus or minimize groups. If the developer decides to implement the idea, they should decide what feels right OR make it optional.
I would also assume in any of these clicking or control-clicking the focused group, the preview thumbnails would disappear. To get them back one would have to move the mouse away and hover over the group button again for a moment.
Thanks for the program RaMMicHaeL. It’s a nice addition to Windows 7.
I agree with you. This would probably be the optimum solution.
I created a suggestion on the feature idea site, please give it a vote if you think it sounds like a good idea.
http://tweaker.uservoice.com/forums/73857-general/suggestions/1392101-clicking-on-unfocused-group-should-restore-all-win?ref=title
I wish we could reorder windows that are already grouped together, like Taskbar Shuffle allows in XP. Thanks. Great work.
Thanks a lot for this great tool! It’s a real life saver, I couldn’t believe it when I realized shortly after upgrading to Windows 7 that windows run by the same application “stick” together.
Hey RaMMicHaeL, have you looked at: http://www.geoffchappell.com/viewer.htm?doc=notes/windows/shell/explorer/taskbarexceptionsicons.htm. Maybe something useful to help in 7TT development?
Seems like it refers to the grouping of XP/Vista. Did you try it on 7?
Thanks a lot! 🙂 Was really annoyed by the group by application ID feature!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Works perfect. Thanks much. Again MS hoses power users by assuming everybody wants Windows for Dummies. Good thing we have devs like you on the Internets.