April 12, 2022
Microsoft’s response to the request to bring back the side taskbar support has indicated that the company may not return it.
According to Tali Roth, Microsoft’s Head of Product, only a small proportion of Windows users use the feature, and it remains questionable whether it will be brought back.
“When it comes to something like actually being able to move the taskbar to different locations on the screen, there’s a number of challenges with that. When you think about having the taskbar on the right or the left, all of a sudden the reflow and the work that all of the apps have to do to be able to understand the environment is just huge,” Roth explained.
More than 12,500 Windows users on the Feedback Hub are asking the company to restore the feature.
“When you look at the data, while we know there is a set of people that love it that way and, like, really appreciate it, we also recognize that this set of users is really small compared to the set of other folks that are asking for other features. So at the moment, we are continuing to focus on things that I hear more pain around,” Roth said.
While noting that the company continues to evaluate user feedback, he noted that Microsoft “does not have a plan or set a date when we would, or if we would, actually build the side taskbar.”
The sources for this piece include an article in BleepingComputer.
