Just a few days ago Microsoft has released a new Dev channel build 25179 to Insiders. The most important change in it is tabs in File Explorer enabled for everyone. It also includes a new navigation pane, also enabled for everyone. Besides, it comes with a hidden gen. There's a new taskbar animation.
The new feature, as you could already guess, is under a gradual roll-out. It is available to a small set of Insiders. So one group has the older flying out icons when the taskbar appears on the screen. The other group has a brand new zoom out animation.
The following video demonstrates the new animation in action.
While there is no option to turn the new animation on or off anywhere in the system. To enroll your Windows 11 to the animation testing, you need to use the ViveTool app. Do the following.
Enable New Taskbar Animation in Windows 11
- Download ViveTool from the official page on GitHub.
- Extract it to the C:\vivetool folder.
- Now, right-click the Start button and select Terminal(Admin) from the menu.
- Finally, type the following command:
c:\vivetool\vivetool.exe /enable /id:39072097 /store:both, and press Enter. - You can also try to specify the "variant" option to spot a difference from defaults with this command:
c:\vivetool\vivetool.exe /enable /id:39072097 /variant:1 /store:both - Open the Start menu and select Restart from the menu of the power icon to reboot Windows 11.
You are done.
If you aren't happy with the new animation, you can revert the change at any moment of time. For that, open the elevated Terminal once again, and issue the following command:
c:\vivetool\vivetool.exe /disable /id:39072097 /store:both
So, animations are the new feature that the Windows 11 taskbar is getting in the near future. Perhaps there will be a notable group of users who won't be happy with the direction Microsoft takes with the taskbar. The most awaited features Windows 11 is missing are the full taskbar context menu, and (the most important one) the ability to ungroup running apps with visible text labels. Sadly, there is no sign of that Microsoft will return them any soon.
Via @PhantomOfEarth
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This can also be observed under 22H2 as well according to my tests.
id:39072097 has nothing to do with animation, it is the ID that enables the different types of search box in the taskbar.
SBBS: 39072097