The taskbar in Windows 11 lacks many of the useful features that previous OS versions used to offer out of the box. One of them is the ability to ungroup app buttons and show their text labels. This may change soon, with this feature coming back to the taskbar in Windows 11.
A new hidden feature, originally discovered by well-known Windows enthusiast Albacore, suggests that it is already in the works. It even has its own velocity ID, which one could use with ViveTool.
However, it is at its early development stage, so it remains force disabled even if you try to change it with ViveTool. As of now, it won't have any effect. Albacore managed to apply a few patches to binaries, and got this working.
As you can see, it no longer features window titles like in Windows 10. It simply shows an individual icon per each open window. I do believe that is because of the early implementation, and lately it will get the ability to show the text labels as well.
If you are curious, the ID is 29785186, so the command looks like
vivetool /enable /id:29785186
Anyway, as of now it does nothing without extra patches. Quite possible it will start working in forthcoming builds.
The ability to show text labels and ungroup app windows in the taskbar is one of the features users miss a lot. It is nice to see that the Redmond firm is making steps in this direction.
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We also need an option to show labels (aka Never Combine), as well as the option to turn that space-wasting search bar into a search icon again. That search button change was such a pointless and backwards change.
Absolutely. This has been asked for by thousands of users via the Microsoft feedback hub, starting well over a year ago. Downgrading your interface is a slap in the face to “power users”. If Microsoft was listening, restoring this feature would have been prioritised long ago.
The other methods with Winaero or PatchExplorer froze my explorer after some specific Windows Update. I’m considering to downgrade to Windows 10
If they spent a fraction of the time on “never combine” that they did on the rollback function, I would not have had to roll back to Windows 10 at all! In the meantime, I’ll be on Windows 10 until this gets fixed.