Advertisement

How to enable the new taskbar overflow in Windows 11

Here's how you can get new taskbar overflow in Windows 11 working if it is not available for you. Microsoft is slowly making it available to a broader audience, leaving many users without a chance to try it.

Advertisеment

Recent Insider builds of Windows 11 include a new taskbar experience. When you open a lot of apps and documents, their icons may stop fitting the taskbar area. To make app management convenient, Windows 11 displays the apps that don't fit in an additional flyout.

new taskbar overflow experience

The new taskbar will automatically switch to overflow mode when running app icons don't fit the dedicated area between the left and right edges. In this mode, it will have a new button with three horizontal dots. Clicking the button opens a flyout that includes all applications that do not fit the default taskbar.

Microsoft is rolling out the new overflow pane in both Beta and Dev insider channels, which is a hidden feature for most. The company says they are collecting feedback by giving it to small groups of users.

So, if you don't have this new feature, but would like to give it a try, you have to enable Windows 11 taskbar overflow manually. Do the following.

Enable Taskbar Overflow in Windows 11 (Dev & Beta)

  1. Open your browser to this GitHub page and download the latest release of ViveTool.
  2. Extract the archive contents to the c:\vivetool folder.Vivetool Files
  3. Press Win + X and select Terminal (Admin) to open an elevated console.Open Terminal
  4. In either PowerShell or Command Prompt tab, issue the following commands subsequently.Windows 11 Enable Taskbar Overflow
    • c:\vivetool\vivetool /enable /id:35620393
    • c:\vivetool\vivetool /enable /id:35620394
  5. Restart Windows 11 to make it read the changes.

You are done. Windows 11 taskbar will now have the new overflow flyout.

To undo the change, you can use the following commands.

  • c:\vivetool\vivetool /disable /id:35620393
  • c:\vivetool\vivetool /disable /id:35620394

Similarly, you can enable other new features in preliminary builds of Windows 11, including the new Desktop Spotlight theme.

H/t to PhantomOcean3 for the commands.

Support us

Winaero greatly relies on your support. You can help the site keep bringing you interesting and useful content and software by using these options:

If you like this article, please share it using the buttons below. It won't take a lot from you, but it will help us grow. Thanks for your support!

Advertisеment

Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

css.php
Using Telegram? Subscribe to the blog channel!
Hello. Add your message here.