Adjusting the Taskbar for Multiple Displays

Written by Barry Dysert (last updated November 19, 2018)

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With multiple displays, you can control how the Taskbar looks on those displays. You have a few choices. You can have the Taskbar be on each monitor, you can set things up so that the Taskbar resides only on your primary monitor, and you can control which buttons appear on different monitors' Taskbars.

To arrive at the place that lets you customize your Taskbar, right-click an empty space on your Taskbar and select Taskbar Settings from the resulting Context menu. The following window appears: (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. Some Taskbar settings.

What is shown in the figure are the top Taskbar settings. To get to the ones dealing with multiple displays you need to scroll down a bit. When you get there, you'll see an on/off switch that determines whether your Taskbar is shown on all displays or only on the main one. Next is a drop-down list where you can set how Taskbar buttons are shown: All taskbars, Main taskbar and taskbar where window is open, or Taskbar where window is open.

There is one final drop-down list, where you can set how buttons are to be combined on other taskbars. You can combine buttons on other Taskbars: Always (hide labels), When taskbar is full, or Never.

 This tip (13587) applies to Windows 10.

Author Bio

Barry Dysert

Barry has been a computer professional for over 35 years, working in different positions such as technical team leader, project manager, and software developer. He is currently a software engineer with an emphasis on developing custom applications under Microsoft Windows. When not working with Windows or writing Tips, Barry is an amateur writer. His first non-fiction book is titled "A Chronological Commentary of Revelation." ...

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What is 3 + 7?

2018-11-21 15:03:51

Bud Ingersoll

I appreciate placing the icon in the "taskbar where the window is open". Quite useful.

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