There is one weirdism, however: The dragged file icon will have a “No” symbol overlay-a circle with a line through it-which typically indicates that the operation you are attempting will not work. Key among them is the return of drag and drop: you can once again drag a document or image file to a compatible running app’s Taskbar shortcut and that app will open so you can drop the file, opening it in that app as before.

In any event, Microsoft is making some improvements to the Taskbar in Windows 10 version 22H2. That is, Microsoft didn’t take features away from the Taskbar we used in Windows 10, it simply started over with a new interface that it says is faster and more reliable. The issue, of course, is that the Windows 11 Taskbar, like the new Start menu, has been built from scratch. And so bringing them back in Windows 11 is not a priority. Despite Taskbar complaints being among the top feedback for Windows 11, the firm said in April that too few people used the missing features in previous Windows versions. Unfortunately, Microsoft has indicated that it has no plans to fix many of these issues. And there are probably others I’m forgetting. And when you right-click the Taskbar, only a single item-“Taskbar settings”-appears in the resulting context menu the Windows 10 Taskbar had many, many items in this menu, including quick access to Task Manager. You cannot drag files to an app shortcut and open them in the underlying app. You cannot right-click default Microsoft items to remove them, as was possible in Windows 10. It is no longer possible to position the Taskbar on any side of the display. Unfortunately, Windows 11 brought the biggest set of functional regressions related to the Taskbar since this interface first debuted. Over time, the Taskbar was enhanced in each new version of Windows, with perhaps the biggest change coming in 2009, in Windows 7, when Microsoft commingled app launching shortcuts with those for running apps.

The Taskbar first appeared in Windows 95, and at that time Microsoft positioned this UI as being similar to the channel buttons on a television, where the user could select the app they wanted and switch to it. The Taskbar has emerged as the poster child for everything that is wrong with Windows 11.

Taskbar close all windows at once