floating taskbar in windows 11? nope. in linux? yes.
Right up front, let it be known this is an out-of-the-box STOCK feature in any modern Linux distribution with KDE Plasma. No plugins or special programs are even necessary to do what you're about to see.
One of the most annoying things about Windows 11 is the taskbar. It's at the bottom of the screen, but that's not the problem. The problem is that you can't move it, nor can you resize it. All you can do is adjust the alignment of stuff to center or left and enable or disable auto-hide. That's it.
There was a way to get a cool floating taskbar in Win11 at one point...
...but no longer. Maybe it will come back, maybe not. Nobody knows for sure. And, of course, many rumors are flying about saying it will come with Windows 12 for whenever that happens.
Just as a guess, I thought hmm, can my Linux OS do this since I have KDE? Let's try a right-click on the taskbar and see what happens, and...
There it is. Floating Panel. Can I center and resize this? Let's try that, and...
Done. And this is just one of several ways I can do it. Float it, have it whatever color I want, text descriptions or icons (my choice), tall or short, any size I want right down to the pixel, any width I want, pick any SIDE that I want (top, bottom, left or right of screen), whatever alignment I want, set to be always in front or allow windows to cover it, auto-hide or not.
The taskbar restrictions in Win11 are infuriating. In Windows 10 you could at least get a smaller taskbar and position it to top, left, bottom or right. No option to float as far as I know, but you could at least, y'know, move the thing, resize the thing and allow multiple rows if you wanted.
I'm not saying switch to Linux, nor am I saying to go back to Win10 if running Win11 now because switching operating systems is tedious, even if just from one version of Windows to another.
But I am saying that Windows has some catch-up to do in the taskbar department. A floating taskbar is a thing people like, and should be a standard setting for Windows. And by standard I mean no crazy stupid registry edits or third-party programs needed to do it. Floating taskbar should be an out-of-the-box standard thing Windows ships with that the user can set. Linux can float a panel easily, and MacOS has had a floating dock for a very long time, so why can't Windows float its taskbar?
Years ago, people would have accused Microsoft of trying to copy Apple with a floating taskbar. But I'm absolutely certain Windows users would very much welcome that feature now.
Not only does that bar need to optionally float, but also be able to be resized and positioned bottom, top, left or right, user's choice. Microsoft needs to copy Linux here and not Apple, because Linux is the only environment that truly gets it right. Let the user configure the taskbar any way they want. I'm positive adding that feature in would be well received.
Published 2025 Feb 11
