In Windows 10, when you hover over a taskbar button of a running app or group of apps, a thumbnail preview appears on the screen. For a single window it shows a single thumbnail, and for multiple windows it shows a number of thumbnail previews in a row. If you wish to enlarge or decrease these thumbnails in Windows 10, I will explain how it can be done with a simple Registry tweak.
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As you may be aware, Windows 7 introduced a redesigned taskbar which abandoned much loved classic features but introduced some nice improvements like large icons, jump lists, draggable buttons etc. Windows 10 comes with the same taskbar. It does not have many configurable settings exposed in the GUI to tweak its behavior but there are some hidden secret Registry settings which you can fine-tune. In this article, we will see how to change the taskbar thumbnail hover delay in Windows 10.
When you hover over the taskbar button of an open app, it will show you a small thumbnail preview of its window. See the following screenshot:
It is possible to adjust the size of these thumbnails. Here is how.
To change the taskbar preview thumbnail size in Windows 10, do the following:
- Open Registry Editor.
- Go to the following Registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband
Tip: You can access any desired Registry key with one click.
- Here, modify or create a new 32-bit DWORD value namedMinThumbSizePx. Note: If you are running 64-bit Windows 10, you still need to create a 32-bit DWORD.
- Set its value data in decimals to the number of pixels you want for the size of taskbar thumbnail previews. For example, you can set it to 400 pixels as shown below.
- Modify or create the MaxThumbSizePx 32-bit DWORD value and set it to the same value.
- Restart the Explorer shell or sign out and sign in back to Windows 10.
This will change the taskbar preview thumbnail size in Windows 10. See screenshots below.
Before:
After:
You are done.
To restore the defaults, just delete the above mentioned MinThumbSizePx and ManThumbSizePx values. Don't forget to restart the Explorer shell.
Winaero Tweaker
If you would like to avoid Registry editing, here is good news for you. In the past, I created a freeware tool called Winaero Tweaker, One of its options is "Taskbar Thumbnails". It can tweak and change many hidden secret taskbar thumbnail parameters which cannot be changed via the Windows 10 GUI. Using it, you can change the taskbar preview thumbnail size just with a few clicks.
It can control all mentioned parameters in the article and many more. Using this tool, you will be able:
- Adjust thumbnail size.
- Adjust number of grouped application thumbnail windows.
- Adjust horizontal spacing between the thumbnails.
- Adjust vertical spacing between the thumbnails.
- Adjust thumbnail's caption position.
- Adjust thumbnail's top margin.
- Adjust thumbnail's bottom margin.
- Adjust thumbnail's left margin.
- Adjust thumbnail's right margin.
- Completely disable taskbar thumbnails.
You can download Winaero Tweaker from here. It works in Windows 10, Windows 8 and Windows 7 without issues.
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Very easy through Winaero Tweaker which has become a real “must have” tool.
Thanks a lot, Sergey, for creating this amazing ‘Swiss knife” for Windows ! ;-)
You are welcome. Thanks for kind words!
I love this feature, as the taskbar preview thumbnails are really annoying in RDP windows as you move the mouse across the edge quite often where these are activated. Unfortunately, on any Windows 10 machine I’ve disabled the thumbnails completely, the change does not remain permanent. I’m not sure what triggers the thumbnails to come back, but if you could look into either a fix or an explanation as to why, I’d appreciate it.
7+ Taskbar Tweaker can disable thumbnails for good.
Nice tweak, the thumbnails are much more useful when you can see what is inside them properly
This article looked like it was exactly what I was looking for. My machine is Win 10, 1903, and when I open multiple tabs in Internet Explorer, and when I hover over the IE icon on the taskbar, the thumbnails that pop up are often a different size, and occasionally in a different order! I added MaxThumbSizePx and made both Max and Min the same…200 pixels. I rebooted the machine to test…problem continues. Thumbnails that pop up when I hover over IE icon on taskbar are different size every time I hover, and sometimes in different order. Hope you have some thoughts on this…it’s driving me a bit crazy.
Thanks!
Got windows 10,trying to make icons in taskbar bigger with Winaero Tweaker but the thumbnails dont change size when I move the slider along.Yes I did restart explorer.
On windows 11, setting taskbar position to Top, can we move the previews to appear below the taskbar ?
Same problem on windows 11. Taskbar to top, thumbnails (preview of apps open) not shown. Furthermore: App which are not opened (e. g. Adobe, Thunderbird or else) – when pointed to by mouse, the name of the app appears which prevents clicking on the icon itself. One has to wait till the name disappears (few seconds). Than one can click successful. – Sorry, my English is not the best, I hope you understand nevertheless.
Hi, pls is there any solution for the case when I completely disable the taskbar thumbnails previews in Win11 22H2 22621 build and they show again after a while? Disabling the previews works only for a while.
Thnx for helping me.