When Windows 11 launched in 2021, it was defined as much by what was missing as by what was new, with a redesign that inexplicably stripped away the deep customization options power users had relied on for decades.
Microsoft locked and limited the taskbar in Windows 11 to the bottom of the screen. A big downgrade to how things were on the predecessor Windows 10.
Now, nearly five years after that controversial debut, Microsoft is finally preparing to right that wrong. According to new internal reports, the company is actively developing a fully movable and resizable taskbar that will allow users to dock their start menu to the top, left, or right of the screen once again, with the feature slated to arrive in a major update later in 2026.
Windows Central reports that Microsoft is working on bringing the functionality back, citing sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans.
If that sounds familiar, you may think of Mozilla. The Firefox maker started to bring back features and introduce features that Firefox enthusiasts wanted for years recently.
It could reflect how serious the situation is for Microsoft. Mozilla faces a declining user base, as it tries to juggle a user-first approach with the necessity of having the world’s largest advertising company finance operations.
Microsoft’s situation is different. Windows is still the dominating desktop operating system. Yes, there is Apple with macOS, but it does not really seem to be a focus of the company. Linux is gaining, but recent gains come down to a large degree on Valve’s Steam Deck, which runs Linux.
Still, Microsoft’s bet on AI and the first rush of integrating AI into everything seems to have backfired somewhat. It did not help that features such as Recall were not designed properly and seen as threats by many users instead of useful tools to help them in their day-to-day activities when using Windows.
Whether it is able to regain the trust of Windows users remains to be seen. A very good start would be to deal with the looming Windows 10 end of support situation for home users. Come October 2026, millions of Windows 10 devices that can’t be upgraded to Windows 11 officially won’t get any updates anymore.
Extending this to the three years that corporate customers get would show plenty of good will and would certainly help paint Microsoft’s image in a better light.
I don’t want to move the task bar, I want to remove all of M$’s crap from the start menu.
I’ve been using Power Start Menu since I switched to 11. It hides the ad and search garbage from the start menu (and has always just worked) but it can’t do anything about the size leaving a huge box 3 times too big and 66% blank space.
I hope this “feature” doesn’t break something like most “features” seem designed to do these days.
I use StartAllBack which is great; no problems.
“A fully movable and resizable taskbar that will allow users to dock their start menu to the top, left, or right of the screen once again.”
There’s really no need; StartAllBack provides the functionality and has for years; MS is playing “catch-up” with third party developers. Start 11 is great as well.
What makes Windows 11 so wonderful isn’t Windows 11; it’s the ability to find high quality 3rd party programs, many of them open source, that allow some dynamite tweaking to make Windows 11 something more than Windows 10 or 8 or 7. With 2-3 programs, one can have a more functional UI than Windows has ever, will ever produce. MS doesn’t have the time to play with Windows development–they already have the monopoly; there are more important shareholder value projects such as Azure and Co-Pilot.