Is there a third-party alternative to the system tray notification area?

Anixx · Friday at 10:05 AM

I am looking for a taskbar plugin for Win10 taskbar (or Win11 in Win10 mode) that replaces the system notification area (including clock and built-in icons). Would be interested in similar software for older versions of Windows as well.

Rollback_Jockey · Friday at 12:03 PM

For what purpose?

NormanF · Friday at 5:42 PM

Anything is better than Microsoft. Third party alternatives are superior and offer more functionality and customisability.

Rollback_Jockey · Friday at 5:47 PM

NormanF said:
Anything is better than Microsoft. Third party alternatives are superior and offer more functionality and customisability.

Why not name a few then?

Anixx · 2024-06-29T03:49:02-0400

Rollback_Jockey said:
For what purpose?

Because they removed it in Win11 24H2.

cereberus · 2024-06-29T05:03:08-0400

NormanF said:
Anything is better than Microsoft. Third party alternatives are superior and offer more functionality and customisability.

Then why bother use Windows at all?

Edwin · 2024-06-29T06:04:04-0400

StartAllBack

Rollback_Jockey · 2024-06-29T09:13:07-0400

Anixx said:
Because they removed it in Win11 24H2.

24H2 isn't even a production release yet, it's a build in progress.

BunnyJ · 2024-06-29T09:17:22-0400

Rollback_Jockey said:
24H2 isn't even a production release yet, it's a build in progress.

24H2 is just about a finished product.

BobOmb · 2024-06-29T10:06:17-0400

If a dev stumbled across this thread, a list of wanted features would probably be helpful

what could you do with the old 3rd party applications that you cant do now?

its actually easier in Win11 to pragmatically control the notification area, icon promotion is a good example.. You can move icons from the taskbar/overflow instantly by changing a reg key.. It’s a lot more difficult to do the same thing in 10

Edwin · 2024-06-29T20:51:14-0400

BobOmb said:
what could you do with the old 3rd party applications that you cant do now?

Toolbars and my Drag N Drop Outbox, just to name a couple...

hdmi · 2024-06-30T07:19:37-0400

BobOmb said:
its actually easier in Win11 to pragmatically control the notification area, icon promotion is a good example.. You can move icons from the taskbar/overflow instantly by changing a reg key.. It’s a lot more difficult to do the same thing in 10

He doesn't want to use the Win11 taskbar. (Neither do I, for that matter...)

Edwin · 2024-06-30T07:42:39-0400

I really appreciate the clean look of W11 Taskbar, flyouts and modules...,
I just don't appreciate their limited functionality, so, you get the best of both worlds with SAB.

hdmi · 2024-06-30T10:14:07-0400

Edwin said:
I really appreciate the clean look of W11 Taskbar, flyouts and modules...,
I just don't appreciate their limited functionality, so, you get the best of both worlds with SAB.

View attachment 100299

I disagree. The minimum taskbar height that is possible to be achieved is still too tall. After I change the icons size to the smallest option available, they are still too big. After I change the spacing between icons to the narrowest option available, the spacing is still too wide.

Just to give you a quick example of what I mean, here is a pic I edited in another thread almost 2 weeks ago. The taskbar on the top is from SAB. On the bottom is the Win10 taskbar from ExplorerPatcher.

ShamrockRig · 2024-06-30T10:34:44-0400

hdmi said:
I disagree. The minimum taskbar height that is possible to be achieved is still too tall. After I change the icons size to the smallest option available, they are still too big. After I change the spacing between icons to the narrowest option available, the spacing is still too wide.

Just to give you a quick example of what I mean, here is a pic I edited in another thread almost 2 weeks ago. The taskbar on the top is from SAB. On the bottom is the Win10 taskbar from ExplorerPatcher.

Damn thats super messy and an OCD issue for me LOL

hdmi · 2024-06-30T10:56:43-0400

ShamrockRig said:
Damn thats super messy and an OCD issue for me LOL

Yes, the one on the top is. It's got icon overflow in both the open apps area and the notification area, and the tiny indicators below the open app icons remind me of this:

NormanF · 2024-06-30T11:18:45-0400

A shame we can't revert back to the Windows 10 taskbar. The latest Explorer Patcher, following Microsoft removed customisation for it.

hdmi · 2024-06-30T12:17:22-0400

NormanF said:
A shame we can't revert back to the Windows 10 taskbar. The latest Explorer Patcher, following Microsoft removed customisation for it.

I am currently running the latest pre-release version of ExplorerPatcher on 2 different laptops. Both laptops are on Windows 11 version 23H2 build 22631.3810. I still have my Win10 taskbar on both. So no, it hasn't been removed from ExplorerPatcher. As the documentation of ExplorerPatcher clearly states, ExplorerPatcher is not guaranteed to work correctly on insider builds of Windows. It actually never was. That's because, for the most part, testing it on insider builds is just a waste of time. The moment when 24H2 will officially be released by Microsoft, I will simply stick to 23H2 until I know that I can still continue to use the Win10 taskbar on it or until some other solution is found.

Windows 11 build 26002+ has a new component, DisableWin10Taskbar (ID: 42537950). When enabled, this component prevents the legacy code from loading, but ViVeTool can be used to disable this component. A new pre-release version of ExplorerPatcher was released some time ago, which checks if this component is enabled, and, if it is, then ExplorerPatcher gracefully falls back to the Win11 taskbar. This effectively avoids the crash condition that otherwise would occur with 26002+ builds if the user tried to use the Win10 taskbar option in ExplorerPatcher. This crash condition was the only reason why ExplorerPatcher got blocked by Windows Security (Defender). That is, ExplorerPatcher got blocked by it in spite of the fact that the author of ExplorerPatcher made it abundantly very clear that you aren't supposed to use ExplorerPatcher on anything excepting only production builds of Windows 10/11 unless maybe if you feel lucky.

Berton · 2024-06-30T13:07:39-0400

One thing nice about the Open-Source Linux is that if one of the about 100 different, most free, offerings shown on www.distrowatch.com doesn't meet the needs, one can write their own version as desired.

ShamrockRig · 2024-06-30T13:24:08-0400

hdmi said:
Yes, the one on the top is. It's got icon overflow in both the open apps area and the notification area, and the tiny indicators below the open app icons remind me of this:

Both are to me lol