La taskbar It was one of the aspects that most caught the attention of users when Windows 11 appeared, with its more modern and intuitive design, geared towards productivity. But, What to do when Windows 11 taskbar is not working? That's what we're going to discuss in this post.
And despite all the undeniable improvements and new features that this new design of the taskbar in Windows 11 has brought us, there have been various complaints among users. recurring complaints and problems when using it.
To be fair, Microsoft has been taking note of these bugs, and many of them have been fixed through patches and updates. Others, however, persist stubbornly, negatively affecting the user experience.
Let's see below what to do when the Windows 11 taskbar does not work, applying the most appropriate solution in each case.
The bar does not respond
This is one of the most common and irritating problems. The bar seems to be frozen and does not respond to any of our commands. The solution for this is to restart the Windows Explorer process, which we can do as follows:
- First we use the key combination Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the Task Manager.
- Then, in the list of processes, we look for the Windows Explorer.
- Finally, we right click on it and select Restart.
This solution can also be applied when we find that the bar does not show the open or minimized applications.
The icons have disappeared
This is another of the most disconcerting situations regarding the Windows 11 taskbar that we can encounter. The icons do not appear, which makes the bar useless. To solve this issue, we can try restore icons from the Settings menu. This is how we should proceed:
- First we are going to "Setting".
- Then we click on the section "Personalization" and we select "Taskbar".
- Once there, we select the option «Taskbar behaviors», where we will be able to activate or deactivate the applications that will be visible in the taskbar from the notification area.
This method also works if the network, volume and battery icons have disappeared from the taskbar.
Related to this, we recommend you read our posts about How to add icons to the taskbar and how to center icons on the taskbar.
Problems with “drag and drop”
Another of the Windows 11 taskbar problems most reported by users is the inability to use the classic mechanism of dragging and dropping files onto icons. This greatly limits the usability of the bar and its possibilities.
The simplest solution to end this problem is toUpdate the operating system to version 22H2 or later. All we have to do is access the Settings menu and enter Windows UpdateThere we can check if there are updates available and install the most recent update.
The bar does not appear (it is hidden)
Sometimes, the Windows 11 taskbar doesn't work because… It doesn't even appear on the screen! Although this may seem like a serious error at first, it is actually one of the easiest to fix. It simply consists of disabling an option that shouldn't be enabled. What you need to do is adjust the behavior of the taskbar by doing the following:
- We open the menu again Configuration.
- Then we click on "Personalization" and we select the option "Taskbar".
- There, in the section «Taskbar behaviors», you just have to deactivate the option "Automatically hide the taskbar", the reason why it is not displayed on the screen.
Reset the taskbar to its original settings
The solutions presented here can be very useful when the Windows 11 taskbar is not working. However, in case they fail or do not resolve a specific issue, we can always resort to a very effective resource: reset the taskbar to its default settings. This is how we should do it:
- To begin, we start the Registry Editor (in the Windows search bar, we write regedit).
- Then you have to access this folder: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Taskband
- Alli We remove the Taskband key and we restart the computer.
Conclusions
In addition to all this, many users have complained about can't move the taskbar (always appears in a centered position) nor being able to change its sizeThese are unique and unchangeable characteristics of the new design, which reduces the capacity for customization.
Beyond this, if after applying some of the solutions outlined here the problems persist, we can only wait for them to be resolved through an official update from Microsoft.