Microsoft has explained why you cannot drag the new movable Taskbar on Windows 11, a feature that was present on Windows 10 but failed to make the move to Windows 11 when it gained the ability to move the Taskbar earlier this year.
Vice President of Design at Microsoft, Diego Baca, explains that the inability to drag the Taskbar to move it is a “deliberate design decision,” confirming that such behavior will not be coming to Windows 11 any time soon.
“From our research, dragging the taskbar to reposition it can lead to accidental movements, which is one of the reasons “Lock the taskbar” existed in previous versions of Windows,” Baca said. “We also found that changing the taskbar position isn’t something people do frequently.”
Baca continues: “We felt that providing a discoverable setting, just one right-click away, was a more intentional and predictable experience. It’s a deliberate design decision, not a missing capability.”
Microsoft is making it clear that the ability to drag and drop the Taskbar to move and resize it isn’t coming to Windows 11, which I’m sure some long-time Windows users will be sad to hear. Baca says that most people don’t move the Taskbar once they have placed it where they like, and so the ability to drag it to move it on the fly doesn’t make much sense.
On Windows 10, moving the Taskbar was as simple as right-clicking it, unchecking “Lock the taskbar” and then dragging the Taskbar to your desired location. On Windows 11, it requires right-clicking the Taskbar, opening Windows Settings, then selecting your desired location within an app.
While not as straight forward as before, I agree that this method is tidier and reduces accidental movement that could sometimes occur when users unlocked the Taskbar on Windows 10 and forgot about it. You could also resize Windows 10’s Taskbar by dragging the top of it, another feature that hasn’t made the jump to Windows 11, likely for the same reasons.
It’s good to see Microsoft being more open about why certain features aren’t available on Windows 11. The company has made strides to be more transparent with fans and Insiders about design decisions and processes, and we love to see it.
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