Windows 10: Grouping Pinned Taskbar Icons

Hello:

When I first upgraded to Windows 10, I started playing around with the taskbar. I found a way to manually "group" the icons I had previously pinned. For example, I could group various Office ions. (E.g., Word; Excel). I recall also having a group for antivirus/malware apps. And so on. As I recall, all I had to do was drag and drop icons on top of each other.

I don't know what happened, but somewhere along the way I lost my groups, and cannot recreate them. I've searched for a solution, but the closest I've found is info on some sort of auto-grouping. It's as if I dreamed the whole thing.

Does anyone know what I am describing, and how to regain this ability?

Thanks.

:)

 

Windows app store

On the Start screen there is either a listing or an icon to get All apps. This has Store under the S group.

Right click and pin to Start. Right click, More and pin to taskbar.

To get Chrome you have to download it form Google using Edge.

 

Icons in taskbar disappeared; pinning same icon in taskbar now shows "icon (2)"

ok, maybe I'm not describing my problem correctly.

As far as I know, I have only one taskbar active.

I right click on an app & select 'pin to taskbar', it appears in the taskbar as 'Icon'.

I right click on the same app & select 'pin to taskbar', it appears in the taskbar as 'Icon(2)'.

Now I have two icons of the same app (Icon & Icon(2)).

In my situation, the first 'Icon' disappeared somehow & only 'Icon(2)' is visible.

I then unpin 'Icon(2)' from the taskbar.

I then right click on the same app & select 'pin to taskbar', BUT instead on 'Icon' appearing in the taskbar, 'Icon(2)' appears! This leads me to believe that 'Icon' is still pinned to the taskbar BUT not VISIBLE.

The question is how do I correct this?

 

If you don't refer to custom toolbars ( pointing to folders where you add shortcuts ) you add to main taskbar I don't see what you mean ....

 

Thanks for the reply. I'll try to explain more. I have various apps/programs pinned to the taskbar. I used to be able to drag an icon for a program (e.g., Excel), and drop it on top of another icon (e.g., Word). Then those two would be inside a single "group" icon. When I would hover over that group icon, the individual icons within it would appear just above the group icon, and I could click on one of them to open that program. For me it was a nice way to organize the taskbar, particularly since I had/have lots of icons on it.

 

well I had never seen that , particularly under windows 10 vanilla

Are you sure you hadn't any third party app to do that ?
Otherwise hope someone knows what you are talking about *Smile

 

You may be right about the third party app. That occurred to me too. I do remember having to do SOMETHING to enable it; maybe it was installing a 3rd P app. If so, what is was escapes me, unfortunately.

 

Dunno if you used this :

7 Taskbar Tweaker v2.0, with dragging within groups - RaMMicHaeLs Blog

if so , mark solved *Smile

 

I haven't tried that. Looks good. I did however figure what 3rd P app I was using. It's called Bins. I found it again and started it, and now all is back to normal.

Thanks again for your help.

 

Here's how I do my grouping. I have a place where I have folders that I use for groups. I place the icons I want in the group into the folder.
Then I add it to the task bar by right clicking on the taskbar, go to Toolbars and Add New. I select a folder.
Then I right click on the new toolbar and tell it not to show a title or text. This just leaves the icons.
I adjust the position and size (taskbar must not be set to locked to do this), and once all are where I want them, I lock the taskbar to hide the adjustment handles.

To add another icon, you can right click a portion where there's no icon, select Open Folder, then add another shortcut there. You'd have to readjust the size if you want all the icons to show.

I currently have 10 groups. My taskbar is 2 lines high, and set to auto hide.

Andy

 

For some unknown reason-as usual, when I opened windows 10, my taskbar was blank. I had no idea of the method I used in the first place, but I knew I wanted to arrive at my original taskbar arrangement. However, after some trial and error trying at a fix and Google searching, I came across Andy's post (which was new to me.) I was in luck as his method was the perfect answer as I already had my taskbar groupings in file explorer; so, it was a simple matter to just follow his placement instructions. After placing the group icons into the taskbar, I did have to move the groups around and also move the icons within the groups to mimic my original ordering.

One of the benefits I noted was that the icons within the groups were "packed" closer together than if I had dragged shortcuts from file explorer and manually arranged them into groups. Due to the "packing," I now have 39 app and system icons in 6 groups and a nice sized space in the middle of the taskbar that shows minimized apps...all in one taskbar. Manually constructing the grouped taskbar would have required two taskbars! Great method, Andy, and thanks.