TrayToolbar - add Toolbars back into Windows 11

Like selling 2nd hand breathable air.

Ztruker said:

Has anyone tried this yet?

TrayToolbar - Github - Provide the replacement of add new toolbar function that was cancelled in windows 11.

If you have, any comments?

Click to expand...

I know this is an old thread but it was a first match on my search for TrayToolbar. I recently update my laptop which came with Windows 11 Pro. I had heavily used a custom toolbar in Windows 10 and I was very disappointed when I discovered Windows 11 Taskbar had removed such a simple yet powerful feature. I tried StartAllBack but it didn't support toolbars on Windows 11 24H2. I then tried TrayToolbar and it worked perfect for me. I was even able to use my toolbar folder layout from Windows 10 toolbars without change. Very easy and very simple. Was exactly what I was looking for. Just thought I'd mention it for anyone else looking to get your toolbar back.

Regards,
Rich

Ztruker said:

Has anyone tried this yet?

TrayToolbar - Github - Provide the replacement of add new toolbar function that was cancelled in windows 11.

If you have, any comments?

Click to expand...

carverrn said:

I tried StartAllBack but it didn't support toolbars on Windows 11 24H2. I then tried TrayToolbar and it worked perfect for me. I was even able to use my toolbar folder layout from Windows 10 toolbars without change. Very easy and very simple. Was exactly what I was looking for. Just thought I'd mention it for anyone else looking to get your toolbar back.

Click to expand...

Even though its name suggests that it does, TrayToolbar doesn't support toolbars on ANY version of Windows 11. As a result, it doesn't bring back anything. Instead, it just lets you use a popup menu, which isn't the same as a toolbar at all. For reasons that should be completely obvious, the key purpose of using a toolbar is so it doesn't need an extra mouseclick before it lets you click on the desired item. So, TrayToolbar just misses the point entirely.

hdmi said:

Even though its name suggests that it does, TrayToolbar doesn't support toolbars on ANY version of Windows 11. As a result, it doesn't bring back anything. Instead, it just lets you use a popup menu, which isn't the same as a toolbar at all. For reasons that should be completely obvious, the key purpose of using a toolbar is so it doesn't need an extra mouseclick before it lets you click on the desired item. So, TrayToolbar just misses the point entirely.

Click to expand...

The Windows Taskbar Toolbar feature that disappeared in Windows 11 Taskbar was exactly that, a custom popup cascading menu implementation. As such, TrayToolbar implements that but from the system tray instead of the Taskbar. I was even able to use my Windows 10 toolbar folder structure without change with TrayToolbar. If the Windows 10 Taskbar Toolbar feature could do more than that I was unaware and I only used it for menus, which is why TrayTaskbar works for me to restore this lost feature in Windows 11 Taskbar.

Regards,
Rich

carverrn said:

The Windows Taskbar Toolbar feature that disappeared in Windows 11 Taskbar was exactly that, a custom popup cascading menu implementation. As such, TrayToolbar implements that but from the system tray instead of the Taskbar. I was even able to use my Windows 10 toolbar folder structure without change with TrayToolbar. If the Windows 10 Taskbar Toolbar feature could do more than that I was unaware and I only used it for menus, which is why TrayTaskbar works for me to restore this lost feature in Windows 11 Taskbar.

Click to expand...

It isn't just Windows 10. Windows 7/8/8.1 also has this feature.

Toolbars are moveable and resizable on the taskbar. If the toolbar's size is large enough for all of its items to be able to fit, then it has no popup menu (and no button that lets you open a popup menu).

If a toolbar is positioned between the Start button and the Pinned area so it mimics the Quick Launch area, the toolbar can be resized by moving the Pinned area, i.e., by dragging the separator mark that, when the Taskbar is unlocked, appears directly to the left of the Pinned area.

Similarly, a toolbar that is positioned to the right of the Pinned area can be resized either by 1/ moving that toolbar or by 2/ adding an additional toolbar to the right of that toolbar and then moving this same additional toolbar instead; this additional toolbar can be left empty if needed.

Before locking the taskbar again, right-click on the separator mark in front of a toolbar to be able to hide its text and/or hide its title, also if needed.

hdmi said:

It isn't just Windows 10. Windows 7/8/8.1 also has this feature.

Toolbars are moveable and resizable on the taskbar. If the toolbar's size is large enough for all of its items to be able to fit, then it has no popup menu (and no button that lets you open a popup menu).

If a toolbar is positioned between the Start button and the Pinned area so it mimics the Quick Launch area, the toolbar can be resized by moving the Pinned area, i.e., by dragging the separator mark that, when the Taskbar is unlocked, appears directly to the left of the Pinned area.

Similarly, a toolbar that is positioned to the right of the Pinned area can be resized either by 1/ moving that toolbar or by 2/ adding an additional toolbar to the right of that toolbar and then moving this same additional toolbar instead; this additional toolbar can be left empty if needed.

Before locking the taskbar again, right-click on the separator mark in front of a toolbar to be able to hide its text and/or hide its title, also if needed.

Click to expand...

Well yes, that's true, but those are all related to living on the Taskbar. This can't provide 100% compatibility because it lives in the system tray, not the task bar. Personally I had all my toolbars at the default location on the right near the system tray. I also set the Taskbar to always show the icon so it appears on the Windows 11 Taskbar in the System Tray but a little more right than on my Windows 10 system. So for me, and maybe others, it's an acceptable working replacement for the Toolbar feature MS chose to drop.

Regards,
Rich

carverrn said:

Well yes, that's true, but those are all related to living on the Taskbar. This can't provide 100% compatibility because it lives in the system tray, not the task bar. Personally I had all my toolbars at the default location on the right near the system tray. I also set the Taskbar to always show the icon so it appears on the Windows 11 Taskbar in the System Tray but a little more right than on my Windows 10 system. So for me, and maybe others, it's an acceptable working replacement for the Toolbar feature MS chose to drop.

Click to expand...

For you and maybe others, yes of course. But not for "anyone else looking to get your toolbar back". ExplorerPatcher lets me get my toolbars back like shown in my post #18. Additionally, ExplorerPatcher is truly open source whereas TrayToolbar just tricks you into downloading its source code files only for you to find out that there is no source code to be found anywhere at all. Non surprisingly however, the author of TrayToolbar didn't forget to ask for donations... LOL!

I just reinstalled ExplorerPatcher after not using it for a while. How does it give me the capability of using toolbars? I don't see any setting for that.

Edit: Oops, I'll check out post #18, sorry.

Ztruker said:

I just reinstalled ExplorerPatcher after not using it for a while. How does it give me the capability of using toolbars? I don't see any setting for that.

Edit: Oops, I'll check out post #18, sorry.

Click to expand...

After ExplorerPatcher is installed, its settings window panel can be opened either via right-click on the taskbar > Properties or by running the following command:
C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe C:\Windows\dxgi.dll,ZZGUI
In its Taskbar category you can change the taskbar style to "Windows 10 (ExplorerPatcher)" or, if your version of Windows 11 is older than 24H2, to "Windows 10". After you change this setting, don't forget to restart explorer to make this change take effect. A much slower (yet less likely to have some unexpected side effects/glitches, at least IME) method to restart explorer is to run the following command:
C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe C:\Windows\dxgi.dll,ZZRestartExplorer

After you restart explorer, in some cases you may need to reboot to get rid of glitches that can otherwise occur at some point (that tends to be unpredictable). Choosing to reboot instead of choosing to restart explorer lets you completely avoid this specific issue altogether, though, and, after you are done experimenting to familiarize yourself with the settings you want, normally you can just leave the settings how you want them to be. That's why this specific issue isn't a very big deal, IMO and IME.

Now you should be able to see the toolbar related settings in the taskbar's right-click menu. The taskbar works the same way as on Windows 10 with almost no exceptions; just some of customizations that can be found on Open-Shell's Taskbar tab are semi-broken (specifically, Taskbar text color gets ignored by the taskbar's clock, and Taskbar texture gets ignored by the taskbar's Pinned area).

In the File Explorer category of ExplorerPatcher's settings, changing Control Interface to "Windows 10 Ribbon" brings back the classic File Explorer of Windows 10, but doing this in addition to letting the taskbar of Windows 11 be replaced like how I described above is what tends to make the explorer process in Windows 11 run more stable so it crashes less often, while it also helps to avoid multiple other bugs that still currently exist in Windows 11 by default, as both the Windows 11 taskbar and the Windows 11 File Explorer with tabs still have problems. I find it ironic that some people complain that ExplorerPatcher might break after a Windows update, when the reality is that ExplorerPatcher, over the past 3.5 years and still counting, has been fixing 2 boatloads of broken Windows 11 features.