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How to Show Notification Area Icons in Two Rows in Windows 11

You can make Windows 11 show notification area icons in two rows. After that, icons in the taskbar corner will appear stacked. While Windows 11 doesn't include any option to do it easy in the GUI, there is a Registry tweak you can apply.

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Notification area, also known as tray icon area or taskbar corner in Windows 11, is a special place where classic desktop apps put tiny icons when running in the background.

Such icons indicate that the app is running, allow accessing extra options, and configure or exit the corresponding app. In Windows versions prior to Windows 10 and Windows 11, apps were using those icons to notify the user about events in the related app.  That's why that area is called "notification area".

Having the notification area icons stacked will save space on the taskbar, but yet display more icons without hiding them in the taskbar corner overflow menu.

Windows 11 Show Notification Area Icons In Two Rows
Default (left) and two row tray icons (right).

To make Windows 11 show notification area icons in two rows, do the following.

Make Windows 11 show notification area icons in two rows

  1. Right-click the Start button, select Run, and type regedit to open the Registry editor.
  2. Navigate to the following key in the left pane  HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StuckRects3.
  3. On the right, double-click the Settings binary value.Registry Settings For Two Row Tray Icons
  4. To display the taskbar icons in two rows, modify the data in the cell of the 00000028 row and FE column and set it to 02. Click OK to apply.
  5. Now, restart the explorer process.Windows 11 Enable Two Rows For Tray Icons

You are done! Windows 11 taskbar will now show tray icons in two rows in the taskbar corner.

Undo the change

If one day you decide to undo the change, that's also easy. Just head over the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StuckRects3 in the Registry, and change the 00000028 and FE cell value to 01.

Windows 11 Show Notification Area Icons In One Row

So, lets summarize the information. To show tray icons in two rows in Windows 11, you need to set the Settings binary value,  and set the number in the row 00000028 and FE column to one of the following values:

  • 01 - the default value, Windows 11 shows icons in a single row.
  • 02 - display tray icons in two rows.

I would like to say thanks to Twitter users @harbinger1979
and @PatrickNRussell for pointing me to that tweak.

That's it!

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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.

23 thoughts on “How to Show Notification Area Icons in Two Rows in Windows 11”

  1. I am on 22000.856 and ran regedit as administrator, and restarted explorer.exe – and it does not give me two rows.

  2. In Windows 11 hat es geklappt. Wollte aber wieder zurück weil die Uhr dabei nach unten gerutscht ist.
    Aber es bleibt bei 2 Zeilen obwohl die 01 wieder eingetragen ist.
    Was kann ich tun ?

  3. Sir, I changed system font on Win 11 Version 22H2 (OS Build 22622.590).
    Start menu starting to malfunction and no content was seen on start menu. But worked fine when font changed to default.

    How to safely change font. Any fix for that sir..

  4. Just updated to Windows 11 today and tried this. It’s already set to 2, but my taskbar is only one row.

      1. tried that but it didn’t work. I can see my laptop also using windows 11 does show two rows so it should be possible any luck?

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