Home windows 11 is about to get a second taskbar (nicely, sort of)

Microsoft is towing with the concept of bringing a secondary menu bar-style expertise to the Home windows 11 platform, particularly as a part of the Command Pallette software program that is bundled inside its first-party PowerToys suite.

Referred to as Command Palette Dock, this new consumer interface would permit for user-customizable shortcuts to be positioned in a devoted on-screen strip, with choices for pinning Command Palette extensions, system useful resource monitor tickers, multimedia playback controls, clipboard history, and different helpful quick-access instruments. After all, the strip itself could be toggleable, that means that it would not be pressured upon the consumer.

“The dock is designed to be extremely configurable. It may be positioned on the highest, left, proper, or backside fringe of the display screen, and extensions might be pinned to 3 distinct areas of the dock: begin, heart, and finish. Customers may customise the visible look, together with background, styling, and theme habits, just like the principle Command Palette shell. An edit mode permits extensions to be dragged, reordered, and moved freely between dock areas,” says Niels Laute, Senior Product Supervisor at Microsoft.

In the intervening time, this Command Palette Dock initiative is in a extremely experimental part of improvement. The proposal itself might be seen on Microsoft’s PowerToys repository over on GitHub, which showcases a few pattern screenshots and movies, in addition to some written descriptions. Builders are capable of check out the function by way of compiling code from a devoted department inside GitHub. The corporate is actively searching for suggestions on the proposal, nevertheless it hasn’t dedicated to formally bringing the function to gentle as but.

Command Pallette Dock remains to be conceptual

The function might or might not find yourself delivery as a part of the PowerToys suite

The thought of a devoted UI floor for tickers, instruments, extensions, and different quick-access capabilities is a compelling one, and I personally hope to see Command Pallette Dock get off the bottom. So long as it is an optionally available addition to the Windows 11 expertise, I can see many energy customers appreciating the function and its flexibility. Conceptually, I am a giant fan.

Of specific observe is the flexibility to place the utility’s interface strip to any facet of the Home windows desktop, making it act as a kind of secondary taskbar of kinds. Home windows 11 notoriously lacks the flexibility to relocate its most important taskbar, which has been a significant sore level for a lot of Home windows 10 holdouts. Taskbar repositioning is an working system mainstay within the desktop computing world, with macOS and most Linux distributions embracing the function, and older variations of Home windows providing it natively, too.

Taking Microsoft’s recent commitment to bettering “the general expertise of Home windows,” into consideration, I’ve excessive hopes that Command Pallette Dock’s configurability is an omen of what is to return within the PC house extra broadly. The power to dock the out-of-box taskbar to the facet or prime of the display screen, in addition to a easy dropdown menu for resizing it on the fly, would go a great distance in making Home windows 11 extra palatable for these nonetheless on the fence about upgrading to the OS.

Plus, I simply suppose it might be cool to have two separate, repositionable taskbar interfaces pinned to totally different sides of my PC monitor at any given time — one for managing operating apps, and one other for glancing at CPU efficiency, controlling music playback, and extra.