7+ Taskbar Tweaker for Windows 10 May 2020 Update
Yet another Windows 10 update, yet another set of adjustments that were required for 7+ Taskbar Tweaker to support the new version. The newly released version, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker v5.9, adds support for the new Windows 10 update. Once again, I want to thank all the users who helped test the beta version, provided valuable feedback, reported bugs, and donated to the project. Your engagement keeps me motivated to continue maintaining the project.
By the way, that’s the 10-th Windows 10 version since the first release in 2015, congratulations!
Great! Keep up the good work.
Currently I have last Slow Ring (pre-release) installed and while beta worked just fine stable refuses to work with it with usual “could not load library (107)”
I just disabled insider and may or may not receive stable release in next few days, for now I guess I’ll just revert to beta
The non-beta versions of the tweaker don’t support insider builds (but it might accidentally work). Insider builds are a moving target and change often, and support for them (to some degree) is managed in the beta versions.
i want to thank you for this piece of treasure that your soft is. For me it’s a must have with lot of nice options. Keep up the good work .
It’s sad that these frequent Windows updates cause such problems. I’m a it baffled, to be honest. I’m not aware that there are any changes to Explorer, so I assume they like to mess with its internals.
Yes, it has also been asked here.
bro can you add the feature to cycle btw output audio devices with mouse wheel ….along with a lock key func…to turn this feature on or off…….i know these things are hard…just asking :)…it would be a nice addition
Thanks! I just built a new computer for moving from Win7 to Win10 2004 and this was the last piece I needed to make it work properly. Windows without 7+ Taskbar Tweaker just isn’t right. Your continued updates are appreciated.
v5.9 quarantined and deleted by Symantec AV just after the automatic update from v5.8
what’s happening?
reason:
scan type: SONAR
SONAR.ProcHijack!g43
Application Heuristic
It’s most probably a false positive. Please see the discussion and my reply here:
https://rammichael.com/7-taskbar-tweaker/comment-page-45#comment-11559
McAfee blocked the download or running of the new setup.exe 3 times in the last 3 days. I don’t think the problem is a false positive.
I DO LOVE 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.
Thank you, David Kinney
Why not? To be sure, you can always contact the AV company about it. You can email to virus_research@avertlabs.com as specified here:
https://service.mcafee.com/webcenter/portal/cp/home/articleview?locale=en_US&articleId=TS103032
The problem is you’re using Symantec AV
My god!
This day is coming!
You save Win10!
Thanks!
Hello,
first, thank you so much for 7+TT.
In the latest v5.9 you added
“always hide tooltips” in advanced options.
It works fine for Taskbar items
but it does not hide tooltips when hovering
the mouse over app icons in the System Tray [right bottom]
Am I missing something ?
Friendly greetings,
Yves.
Hi Yves,
The new option only affects taskbar item tooltips, not all taskbar tooltips. The tweaker doesn’t provide a way to disable all taskbar tooltips.
First I absolutely love this little treasure! 2nd as to above, can yuo please, please let 7+ have option to disable ALL the hover tips as mentioned above? I cannot stand them and have spent HOURS in regedit/gpedit and every other thing trying to do away with these horrible “moving graffiti” Thank u sir!
Really Great Job we need it, Thanks
Download link is broken.
Download got working. some temporary problem. Thank you so much! The greatest tool for windows that should be included in the box!
Once again, thank you for making Windows more enjoyable to use. KUDOS.
Thank you for creating 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.
I am currently customizing my new Windows 10 machine to work like my Windows 7 machine via Taskbar Tweaker. I can’t seem to reproduce the behavior I want.
If an application such as Chrome is open, a button appears in the Taskbar. If I left click that button Chrome loses focus and the second application or Desktop gains focus. I don’t like this change of Focus. I was able to deactivate this behavior before, hence, left clicking on a Chrome Button in the Taskbar does Nothing.
How do I reproduce this Behavior?
Thank you
Please see my answer here:
https://tweaker.userecho.com/topics/469-add-option-to-disable-minimize-window-when-clicking-already-active-window
Thank you so much Michael. That is awesome!
There is one more item I was able to do on my old machine which I cannot figure out. I programmed the Tweaker to close an open application if I Double Click on its button in the Taskbar.
Is this still possible?
Thank you Michael.
Yes, it can be configured via the advanced options as well. Please refer to the help file, and let me know if you need more help.
Beautiful. Got it. Very nice Help File. Thank you Michael.
Thank you for your great work!
I am very happy that this tool provide many settings for custom the taskbar, especially the one make icon larger! that save my eyes.
Hi RaMMichHaeL,
Thank you and congratulations for your great product. I’ll soon make a donation.
A favor: please move the extraordinarily hard-to-find link for “Advanced Options” out from under the “7T7 7+” logo in the upper left-hand corner, and place it on the main menu/options screen. I use several features in the “Advanced Options,” and find it perplexing that they’re not more readily accessible on the main screen.
Thank you,
Dave
Hi Dave,
Thank you for considering a donation and supporting the project.
Regarding the advanced options, I’ll consider it. It’s not a quick change since all the translations have to be updated. Meanwhile, you can use the caption bar of the main window as I answered here.
I just updated to the May 2020 update, and I now get a “could not load library” error when the program opens.
Taskbar Tweaker version: 5.9
Windows 10 version: 2004, build 19041.421
explorer.exe version: 10.0.19041.421
I also tried beta version 5.9.0.5 and had the same issue.
I also have the same issue, running 5.9 on Windows 10 v2004.
Yet another insider build yet another fail. Could not load library 1004
Win 10 Pro 10.0.19042.421 build 19042
20H2
You must get really fed up of Windows continually breaking your excellent software. 🙁
Yes, the rapid changes are not optimal. The incompatibility is fixed in the newly released beta version, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker v5.9.0.6.
Same here 🙁
Hurrah, new beta works fine, thanks for the quick response.
For those who have “Could not load library 1004” error – just use a last BETA of 7tt. It works fine!
I have started using this application, and it’s great!
Just the thing i needed to have.
Shame windows doesn’t allow you to move taskbar icons, unbelievable !
I’ve just done the latest Windows 10 update and I now getting a problem when Taskbar Tweaker tries to load, and also the Windows Start button doesn’t work.
I’ve temporally uninstalled Taskbar Tweaker and everything seems to be working OK, but I really would like it back :¬ (
Any Ideas?
For now, please try the latest beta version.
“could not load library (5)” after the last windows 10 update
I have the exact same problem.
You’re not alone. I’m pissed.
Same for me, but after manually updating to version 5.9.1 (non-beta) it worked again. I got an error message about a .cfm file during installation, but i just ignored it and it seems to be working fine.
The white window icon on the taskbar does not hide now, apart from that evthg is working fine in the latest beta version! Thanks!
I’m facing the same problem here. Neither w10 start button and the option to increase the taskbar icon size work
I get confused easily, so I’m not sure what version of 7+ that I need for Windows 10, version 2004 (I haven’t updated to it yet). I currently have 7+ 5.9. I’m guessing that I need at least beta version 5.9.0.6? Or will my 5.9 work?
If you have update KB4568831 or KB4566782 installed, you need the beta version. A simpler test would be to just try 5.9, and if it doesn’t work, install the beta version.
Thanks for this idea, because I’m just facing the same effects… The Beta helps!
7+ rocks, I appreciate your maintenance very much 🙂
Current Insider version broke it again ;(
What’s the version of the explorer.exe file? If you can upload the file for me to save me the time of updating the OS, that would be great, thanks.
My bad, I didn’t have the beta.
Beta detected as severe virus threat.
It’s most probably a false positive detection. False positives are unfortunately common for new versions of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker and for beta versions which are less common. Please see the FAQ here and this blog post.
RaMMicHaeL, please note that windows 10 20H2 19042.508 went final build.
https://twitter.com/WZorNET/status/1318625865538936832?s=20
no, 19042.572 (20H2) is the final version that Microsoft officially published yesterday on October 20th, 2020.
Even though you’ll get a warning from 7+ Taskbar Tweaker, it’s supported. The same version of explorer is used in this version as in Windows 10 version 2004.
I just got a prompt to update to the 20H2 feature version.
Do you know if 7tt compatibility breaks with that version?
If so, I’m inclined to defer updating till 7tt is ready, as I find it really useful.
Version 10.0.19042.572 is supported, but 10.0.19042.608 (Release Preview Channel) isn’t. If you’re not using an insider build of Windows 10, it should be fine.
So 7tt (5.9.1) complained about an unsupported version, but worked anyway. Near enough (c:
Just installed KB4580364 which is the Windows 10 20H2 Preview Build 19042.608. I had to install the Beta – v5.8.1.7 to get 7tt to work. The release version fails with the old cannot load libraries message. Just an FYI.
Should have said v5.9.1.7…. Sorry if it caused any confusion.
For lack of a better place I’ll ask here. I’m using Taskbar Tweaker for the purpose of disabling grouping and it seems to be working for some programs but not all, such as paint.net which creates a group on the taskbar of the images currently active inside the program. I suppose it’s because it’s contained within one application, but it still creates grouping in the taskbar, which it’s not supposed to.
Can this be fixed? Thank you.
7+ Taskbar Tweaker doesn’t have an option to disable multiple thumbnails of a single item, but usually the apps that provide that feature do.
According to paint.net’s website:
Indeed I found a setting called “Show image previews in the Windows taskbar” which is on by default. Unchecking it disables the previews and thus the grouping. Thanks!
5.10 crashes silently on Win 10 1909 (18363.1139)
Are there any logs to check?
Can you provide a crash report from Event Viewer? How do I find event logs when a program crashes?
Also, it’s possible that it doesn’t crash, but being killed by an antivirus. You can try adding the tweaker to the exclusions list and see if that makes any difference.
Of course is runs now (and nothung in the log), strange, sorry :/
Just downloaded and installed v5.10. Works like a charm on Window 10 version 2004 build 19041.610. But…. Norton complains about the download. Adding it to the exclusions list fixes that.
Even if I install 7+ TaskbarTweaker, norton will be deleted.
I was in trouble!
Huge thanks for keeping this up to date and making Windows 10 more usable!
Alas still denied to install by F-secure, already for weeks, and trying a couple of times now.
I once reported Tweaker to F-secure to resolve a possible false positive.
But I am tired doing that again for yet another version, and repeat, …
I understood this should eventually be done by some central organisation and get resolved. I am surprised that is still not the case.
thanks for keeping things old skool man. if you one day consider hanging up the reins i hope you find some one / community to carry on. I don’ know if microsoft will ever see the features you carry on / add and see them for what they are worth to us all.
All i want is control, and customisation.
I will suppoprt you from time to time but i know in my heart of hearts that one day i will let go of these features. Thanks again talented programmer (7+ Taskbar Tweaker).
Thank you for the support Deano!
Hey, I love the work you’re doing!
Have a problem. v5.9.1 crashes with the error 107. “Library initialization failed, perhaps your Windows version is not supportet.”
Windows Version 1909 Build 18363.1198
Is there a supportet version of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker or am I out of luck?
Thanks in advance!
Hi Adrian,
The latest version is 5.10, please try it! I believe that updating should solve the problem.
Thank you very much. Worked like a charm.
It’s really impressive that you answer all the questions here and that so fast. Keep up the good work!
Hi,
7+ Taskbar Tweaker is great, thanks so much for your creation and continued support of functionality that Microsoft bizarrely don’t seem to think people need ;-). The lack of this was incredibly frustrating when Win 10 first came out!
Many thanks again,
Jonathan
Hi Jonathan,
Thank you for the feedback and the support!
Heya great tool, I donated to get the early version when windows upgrades broke things. I have a request though, can you put in an option to add items to group task in an alphabetic sort as I have loads of cmd tasks titled first by number and it would be useful not to have to drag them all into order 🙂 Thanks, keep you the good work
Hi,
Thank you for the support.
It’s possible to sort grouped items using Taskbar Inspector. You can also configure a mouse shortcut to sort items in a group. See this UserEcho topic for details.
It’s a great tool for Windows and so glad to see it still gets updates. Thank you for your effort and the community who also help out. Much appreciated.
Unfortunately it doesn’t work. Firefox not running on the background, while taskbar tweaker is set to launch at windows bootup! It doesn’t remember order of Firefox windows after exit…
Please see my answer here. If you meant something else, please clarify what doesn’t work for you.
Weird I read on superuser.com that it is for that. I want to reorder sub-windows on the taskbar of Firefox, so it is remembered after restart! I can do that using this program! But it doesn’t remember order after restart. I tried to set 7+ taskbar to run automatically at bootup and Firefox is set to not run in a background!
I don’t know what you read on SuperUser, perhaps the information was incorrect or you misunderstood it. The tweaker doesn’t provide a way to remember a program’s taskbar order after a program restarts.
Thank you RaMMichael for keeping this very important tool updated.
Hello RaMMicHaeL, in 7+TT, I enabled the Maximize action for the scroll wheel (scroll_maximize_restore). But for elevated (admin) apps, only Restore down and Minimize works, Maximize does not work. Is that a bug or limitation for administrator apps? Would it be possible to fix that? 🙂 Thanks for a wonderful tool and maintaining it for so many years
Hi Gaurav,
It looks like a limitation of Windows. Various events, such as minimize, restore, and close, can be posted to windows of programs that are running as administrator. But posting the maximize command returns an “access denied” error.
Hi. Thanks for replying. Ohh well then that’s a bummer – Microsoft has to fix it. As a workaround, does sending keystroke like “Win key + Up” work in place of whatever maximize command you are sending?
No, that won’t work too, since a non-admin process can’t send keystrokes to an admin window.
Thanks for the new update! I like windows because of your taskbar tweaker!
v5.11.2 Setup frozen on Extract: 2-1-6_1-1.png
Selected update from the setup exe file.
I’m not familiar with this kind of a problem. My guess would be that perhaps your antivirus interferes with the installation. Try whitelisting the tweaker, or turning off your antivirus for the time of the installation.
RaMMicHaeL, No one knows the taskbar better than you. It might be time to create a Classic Taskbar like Ivo Beltchev did with Classic Start Menu. I was Classic Shell’s tester for 8 years and yes it took a long time but it was worth it. Windows 11 or 12 may not keep the Registry value to revert to old Taskbar for long, just like they eventually removed the menu code completely.
Oh it looks like there is no reg key at all to fully revert to the old unrestricted. Just a stupid option to move the icons to the left. And on the new taskbar, position of anything can’t be moved by third party apps. I suggest you stop your efforts on 7+TT at Windows 10 and develop a clean taskbar project that does not require debug symbols of every release. There’s always such a RetroBar on GitHub but it’s written unfortunately in C#: https://github.com/dremin/RetroBar
It can be nice, but it’s a huge project which requires significant time investment. I don’t plan to dedicate time to a project like this, but who knows, maybe I’ll do something related. I haven’t looked at Windows 11 yet, so I don’t have insights yet beyond screenshots that can be found online.
Hi, starting with the latest version of the 7 Taskbar Tweaker (5.11.3, and including the beta 5.11.2.1) when it runs, my Documents and Music folders start requiring admin access to write to them. It is really weird. When I try to copy a file to those folders I get a UAP popup asking for confirmation. When I edit a file in those folders it fails to save. At first I was worried I got a virus or something. With the ransomware going around lately, one can’t be too careful.
To get my access back, I have to uninstall 7TT then log off. Afterward everything is back to normal. This is 100% reproducible. I was able to do it 4 times. As soon as I install 7TT, the problem immediately returns.
Does the new version do anything related to folder permissions?
Hi Ivo,
I can’t think of any change, recent or not, that can cause this kind of behavior. You can try older versions, perhaps you can spot which version introduced it. You can browse for previous versions here.
I had to go as far back as version 5.10 to stop the problem from happening, however that version is restarting Explorer intermittently. That’s the reason I had to upgrade in the first place after the last Windows update.
Do you experience the problem when the tweaker is not running? If you turn off all of the options, does the issue persist?
The problem doesn’t happen when the tweaker is not running. In fact, after login, things are working for a few seconds until the tweaker fully boots up.
BTW, to make it clear, exiting/uninstalling the tweaker doesn’t fix the problem. I have to restart Explorer or log off.
The only features I use are the flipping of the right-click menu, and the disabling of the grouping and combining. I set all 3 to (default), and the problem is still happening.
It sounds like the tweaker causes some side effect, perhaps due to some invalid memory access which stomps over a random, sibling variable. I never experienced this problem, and you’re the first user to report it.
It’s difficult for me to investigate the problem without being able to reproduce it, but let’s try the following: here are three builds, each with some of the code removed. Please try them all, and report back which ones of the three versions cause the problem. Then I’ll focus on the part which causes the problem, and perhaps will send more builds with more focused changes.
Unfortunately all 3 versions have the same issue. I log off before each test, validate that the Documents folder works, install the build, validate that the problem returns, then uninstall and log off. So likely this is a problem with the code that is common to all 3. I will gladly test any builds you send.
I looked at your source code. It relies heavily on poking into undocumented memory. So your theory of inadvertently stomping a nearby variable is quite plausible.
That’s quite surprising – test3 only does some very basic initialization. I added more tests to the same folder with the same link. test4 only waits for an unload command. test5 exits with an error right after being injected. test6 fails the injection, so explorer shouldn’t be affected at all.
Sorry for the late reply. Busy couple of days at work.
First I installed version 4 – same problem. When I ran the installer again to uninstall, I got an error that it contains a virus and the exe got deleted. I’m sure it was a false positive. Used the installer #5 to uninstall.
Second, I tried version 5. It failed with “Could not load library (103), Unknown explorer version”. I guess that was expected. However the problem appeared again! Likely, whatever damage is done to the explorer process is a one-time overwrite, and happens before error code 103 is encountered.
Lastly, version 6 said it could not inject into Explorer. The problem did not reappear.
test5 injects a dll which does absolutely nothing (and the error you got is expected), so perhaps it’s something with the injection process. test6 fails the injection at the beginning.
I added four more tests,
7tt_setup_test5-0.exeto7tt_setup_test5-3.exe, each failing the injection at a different stage. Please try them and let’s see what happens.All 4 showed the problem. 5-0 failed with error 1, 5-1 failed with error 1003, and the other two failed with error 1002.
Maybe if you can send me the source code for the most trimmed-down version, I can run it locally while selectively commenting out pieces until I find the offending write.
Also, I see there is a pending Windows Update today. I will install it tonight and repeat all tests.
The difference between test5-3 and test6 is a single VirtualAllocEx call. Why it causes the issue is a mystery to me.
Sure, you can get the public source code, then replace this line with
if(0), and you should be able to reproduce the behavior. That’s essentially what test5-3 does.OK, I can confirm that a simple standalone program with just OpenProcess and VirtualAllocEx is enough to trigger my problem (as long as the memory is allocated for EXECUTE). I don’t even need MEM_COMMIT. It is extremely baffling.
It is definitely not something your code is doing. Sorry for wasting your time.
The Update today didn’t make a difference. As I was playing around I did find a workaround though. If I run my Explorer windows in their own process, they are not affected. I think that would be enough to keep me going for now.
Can you tell me if the VirtualAllocEx has been the method for injecting code for the past few versions? If so, the trigger for the problem must be the recent Windows upgrade, since up until few months ago everything was working fine.
Yes, it has been the injection method since the very first tweaker version.
Hello RaMMicHaeL, I have recently realized how useful 7+TT’s feature to use mouse wheel to minimize/maximize taskbar apps is. However, I rarely use maximized programs in the “Restore down” (non maximized) state.
When we do mouse wheel scroll down on a maximized app’s button, it first restores down and then doing mouse wheel scroll down again minimizes it. Would it be possible to include an advanced option to bypass the restore down state? 🙂 As in for any app window, a scroll down directly minimizes it without first doing restore down?
Or you could add it in a more generic way e.g. as part of “Mouse Button Control” feature of 7+TT. Wheel up/down can be extra mouse click events, so I can set: taskbaritem|wheeldown with value data of 2.
Hi Gaurav,
What you’re trying to achieve should be the default behavior. I suspect that you’re using the scroll_maximize_restore advanced option, and all you need to do is turn it off. Let me know if you meant something else.
Ah I think I didn’t explain it clearly, my bad.
When scroll_maximize_restore=1,
Wheel up on minimized window first restores it
Wheel up on non-maximized window maximizes it.
Both desired behaviors.
But with that setting on 1, wheel down I always want direct minimize, even for maximized windows. Currently, it first does restore down, then minimize.
On the other hand, if I set scroll_maximize_restore=0, I get direct minimize from maximized or non-maximized state but Wheel up on non-maximized window stops working.
So with scroll_maximize_restore=1, either allow direct minimize regardless of window state. Or with scroll_maximize_restore=0, allow wheel up to maximize non-maximized window.
I hope my explanation is not confusing.
So basically, you want wheel down (minimize) to work as if scroll_maximize_restore=0, but wheel up (maximize/restore) to work as if scroll_maximize_restore=1. Is that right? Currently, that’s not possible. I’ll consider it for future versions.
Yes right. Thank you. And the reason for that being that I always use wheel up to restore the app first, and if it’s not maximized, wheel up again to maximize it (because of some buggy apps which when restarted open in non-maximized state even if they were maximized when exiting).
But most apps I run at specific window states, e.g. browser and file manager always maximized. Text editor always non-maximized. So when I do wheel down with scroll_maximize_restore=1, the maximized apps getting first into a restore down state first before minimizing with wheel down is an unnecessary step for me.