The community Taskforce initiative has now come to a close.
Thanks to everyone who made thoughtful and genuine contributions to the website.
All submissions will be kept publically available for the forseeable future for reference purposes.

This website is part of the community Taskforce initiative

Submission details

promote
47 +57/-10 votes
demote
change vote

Separate certain Taskbar buttons even when "Always combine" is enabled

Submitted by cbohorquezm on February 17, 2009 to Annoyance, Icons, Usability

For most applications, like Explorer Windows, Browsers, etc. the default automatic grouping of Taskbar buttons is really appropriate, avoids opening unnecessary additional windows, and keeps everything much more organized.

However, since I installed Windows 7, I've been annoyed by the fact that there are some applications which would benefit by staying ungrouped, even if the rest of the applications continue to follow the default "Always Combine" behavior.

For example, with this automatic grouping behavior, all Windows Live Messenger chat windows are also grouped (of course), but that means you have to click TWO times EVERY TIME you want to get to one specific chat window. (or similarly, to wait till the taskbar preview comes up and then click). Additionally, the taskbar button of lights up whenever there's a new message/feedback from any of the chat windows, but there´s no way to quickly know from which one of the open chat windows is this feedback coming.

It would be great to keep them separated, so that each has its own Taskbar button, while the rest of the Taskbar buttons would stay grouped.

The user would be able to specify which applications would ALWAYS remain ungrouped, with separate Taskbar buttons for each window, even when the "Always combine" option is enabled. All other applications should stay grouped. *See Image*

This allows fast access to each independent window of the application, as well as separate, detailed feedback from each one of them.

Medium

Medium

Not fixed

Discussion (10 comments)

cbohorquezm wrote on February 17, 2009, 6:04am

Added new image attachment.

jonathanmarston wrote on February 17, 2009, 6:08am

I like this idea. +1

antiufo wrote on February 17, 2009, 4:08pm

+1
absolutely necessary

RedSign wrote on February 17, 2009, 6:06pm

+ 1 for the option of ungrouping certain program entrys

Thunderbuck wrote on February 17, 2009, 8:26pm

How would the user invoke this behavior? (Not a bad idea, but the devil's in the details...)

jonathanmarston wrote on February 17, 2009, 10:25pm

How about dragging the "extra" border that shows up when there are multiple windows open to the right?

cbohorquezm wrote on February 17, 2009, 10:56pm

Good Idea! or maybe when right clicking on this "Extra" border, an additional option could show up in the Jump List called "Keep ungrouped" or similar..?

cbohorquezm wrote on February 18, 2009, 5:40pm

Changed title from [Separate Taskbar buttons even when "Always combine" is enabled] to [Separate certain Taskbar buttons even when "Always combine" is enabled].

Arayta wrote on February 21, 2009, 2:20am

I love you.

+1,000,000,000,000

death_au wrote on February 3, 2010, 10:57pm

+1
I like the dragging the extra border idea. An option for "keep ungrouped" would be really good too.

bojan wrote on March 5, 2010, 3:57am

I agree, this would be especially useful for servers with command line windows. I usually run a source server on my home pc and keep the taskbar button pinned all the way to the left, but I would like to make it not show the label just for that program.

I love Windows 7 but really dislike the grouping, the first thing I did in Windows 7 was disable grouping and switch the taskbar to small icons. I just want grouping for programs I leave running 24/7 like my servers.

dsg wrote on July 8, 2010, 7:24pm

http://www.intowindows.com/tweak-windows-7-taskbar-with-7-taskbar-tweaker/

Check this out. I'm in IT support, so this is critical. Just figured I'd let everybody know.

You might also be interested in...