Out of desperation, I’ve come up with a way to separate Windows 11 taskbar icons into visually-separated groups without having to resort to any 3rd party apps. Takes a while to set up but totally worth it, especially if you have a wide screen monitor and use the taskbar frequently to launch programs. Here’s what I did:
1. Rt-clk any blank space on desktop > New > Text Document.
2. Rt-clk on that .txt document > Show more options > Create shortcut
3. Rt-clk on that shortcut > Properties
4. Click the Change Icon button and select whatever you want your divider to look like .
5. On the Shortcut tab, add “explorer ” (no quotes, but followed by a space) in front of the TARGET path. [Note: Windows will change it to explorer.exe or C:\Windows\explorer.exe but all you have to enter is “explorer “].
6. Click OK > OK to close that dialogue box.
7. Rt-clk on the shortcut > Show more options > Pin to Taskbar.
To change that same shortcut to a different icon:
1. Rt-clk on shortcut > Properties > Change Icon
2. Rt-clk on shortcut > Show more options > Unpin from Taskbar
3. Rt-clk on the same shortcut > Show more options > Pin to taskbar.
NOTE: Repeat ALL steps – including creating additional NEW blank .txt documents – for additional (presumably identical) dividers. Note that this won’t work if you create multiple shortcuts from the same .txt document. For 10 dividers, you must have 10 .txt documents.
Drag to arrange your taskbar program icons and new dividers as desired. When finished, you can delete both the .txt documents and shortcuts.
Attached is screen print of my masterpiece. Cheers!! ~Carol H
