Windows 11 Taskbar Behaviour - Never Combine

Hi GG,

In Windows 11, the "Never Combine" option only stops the grouping — it doesn't make icons or labels automatically resize or fill all the available space like older Windows versions (like Windows 7 or 10) did.

Also, Windows 11's taskbar has a more fixed layout. The size of icons and spacing doesn’t adjust based on remaining space.

You can follow these steps:

• Make sure you're running Windows 11 version 22H2 or later, as earlier builds might not fully support the "Never Combine" setting in the way you're expecting.
• To show labels without grouping, go to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar behaviors, and set "Combine taskbar buttons and hide labels" to "Never".
• Keep in mind that even with this setting, icons won’t automatically resize to fill extra space; the layout remains the same.

I hope you find something hopeful in this message. If you do, it's appreciated to accept the answer as a way to share your valuable experience with the community. Thank you :)

Your faithfully,

Vivian

Good morning GG,

Sorry for this late reply. Somehow I have not seen your comment until now. Just want to clarify my point here that nothing is broken on your system. It's just you are running into a limitation of the Windows 11 taskbar design, which means until another update is coming to fix this, you will then have to "suffer" from this inconvenience for some time. Really sorry about that.

FYI, Windows 11’s taskbar looks flexible on the surface, but the part you are trying to control is hard-wired in the shell. The system only exposes “Never combine,” but it still treats each icon as a fixed-size container, so even with combining disabled, the bar won’t expand items, stretch labels, or shrink icons the way Windows 7–10 did. That entire behavior was removed when Microsoft rebuilt the taskbar on the new XAML shell.

What you are seeing in the screenshot is the expected outcome of the current implementation: the taskbar ungrouped the windows, but it refuses to use the unused horizontal space for anything other than the default icon blocks. This is why the bar feels cramped even when it has room to breathe. The shell doesn’t have logic to redistribute spacing, scale icon frames, or switch to the older “taskbar button” model.

There is no built-in switch that restores the classic behavior. When users need actual dynamic spacing, full button labels, or density control, the only working path today is to bring in a third-party taskbar replacement that re-implements the classic taskband code. That is the only way to regain the pre-Windows 11 behavior because the native taskbar cannot be extended through registry edits or hidden flags; the underlying framework simply doesn’t support it anymore.

So again, I hope you understand that every update or new version comes with conflict, some people would love it and others wouldn't, or some function would not satisfy a group of people. But let's expect everything would be improved soon.

I hope you find something useful in the explanation, and it's really appreciated of you to accept the answer as a way to share your experience with the community. Thank you and have a good day :)

Vivian

Good morning GG,

Just want to know how it is going with your issue? Should you need more information, feel free to leave a message.

VP

Hi,

How is your issue? If you require more details or assistance, don’t hesitate to send a message. Glad to support you!

VP