Vertical taskbar mod seemed so promising but . . .

[jackgtor]

I don't want to seem ungrateful for all the great work that's gone into these mods and I am using some of them but I have to say that the vertical taskbar mod has been rather disappointing and I find it not worth using. I was using ExplorerPatcher until the most recent update when it seemed to break and loved that I could see so many open tasks on the side of screen. The vertical taskbar mod has the same idea but shows so little information. I would love to see the following:

1. A way to reduce the vertical space between tasks.
2. A way to shrink the icon size and perhaps the text size of the task titles so that they take up less space.
3. The notification icons to display in rows on the bottom with as many icons as fit in each row instead of showing only one icon per row.
4. Removal of any other extraneous blank space.

Thanks for listening.
Jack

[m417z]

Hi Jack, thanks for the feedback.

• The notification icons to display in rows on the bottom with as many icons as fit in each row instead of showing only one icon per row.

There's an issue for it here: #1068.

For the rest, some of it might be possible with Windows 11 Taskbar Styler, but it'll require some manual styling.

[jackgtor]

Thanks Michael. That helped a lot with the notification area but I'm still left with the search bar being too big (possibly because it's oriented the wrong way) and each task row being too big with too much space. Do you have any hints on where I can find the list of what else I can tweak and what to look for in that list?

By the way, I had looked briefly at the Taskbar Styler but thought it was only for changing the theme.

[m417z]

My personal preference is not having a search bar on the taskbar, you can always search right from the start menu or with Win+S. If you're used to it, you can use the button or the smaller version of the search bar. Regarding other tweaks, you can start by looking for ideas here: https://github.com/ramensoftware/windows-11-taskbar-styling-guide, and also by experimenting with UWPSpy.

[jackgtor]

Your advice is excellent. I got rid of the search bar and task view buttons to provide more space and it looks like the Taskbar Height and Icon Size mod is compatible with the Vertical Taskbar despite what the latter says in the details. So, I can now display over 30 open tasks in the task bar which I think is even better than I had before. Thanks for all your help and the great tools.