HACKER Q&A
📣 teekert

Why is the Windows taskbar autohide setting so badly implemented?


I have always set "Automatically hide the taskbar" in Windows, for as long a I can remember. I just like it if the UI gets out of my way and only pops up when summoned (in Windows' case by hitting the Win/Super key).

But also for as long a I can remember I have played the game of "what app is forcing my taskbar up"... Usually while I'm trying to hit something that the taskbar is now obscuring (like Firefox's search box, or half of a Teams notification. It is absolutely maddening because I have to click every open app to see if it has anything to report before the taskbar goes down again. And it seems to be getting worse lately I have the feeling.

So I want to ask you HNers., how do you treat the Windows taskbar? Am I missing something? Why is the responsible app never flashing? Why can't it flash just the upper pixel line so I know something is up but it doesn't obscure anything. I have the feeling I am a very small minority of taskbar hiders and nobody really cares about this setting.

In comparison, I never have this issue in Ubuntu, the taskbar is there when I hit the Win/Super key and not there when I leave it alone. How hard can it be?


  👤 forgotmypw17 Accepted Answer ✓
I didn't use autohide because of all that you mentioned. I would typically put it at the top of the screen, and it mostly stayed out of the way.

Then the OS I loved got progressively worse. Poorly implemented taskbar autohide went from being a prominent issue to hardly a concern compared to other stuff.

I said goodbye to the OS I once loved and left.


👤 dragonwriter
> So I want to ask you HNers., how do you treat the Windows taskbar?

Put it on the side and don't use autohide. The concept is good, but the Windows implementation has been so bad for so long it's just not worth dealing with.


👤 pearjuice
Sadly the only way to fix is to kill explorer.exe and restart it as it resets all notifying tasks in the taskbar.