I’ve become bored having the TaskBar along the bottom of my PC screen. It’s been that way for decades now! Can I move my TaskBar to the top of my screen??
The Windows TaskBar has had the same basic design and appearance for the entire history of the Windows operating system. When Microsoft tried to change it and the Start Menu by replacing them with the StartMenu, people went bonkers about it and they had to fall back on the classic design. So you’re right, we’ve had that same TaskBar for a mighty long time! Heck, according to Wikipedia, “Windows 1.0, released in 1985, features a horizontal bar located at the bottom of the screen where running programs reside when minimized (referred to as “iconization” at the time), represented by icons.”
Turns out that you can tweak that Taskbar a bit more in Windows 10 than you could back in Windows 1.0, that’s for sure. You can change color, size of the icons, behavior when there are a lot of windows open and, yes, where the TaskBar shows up on your screen.
Let’s have a look…
To start, here I have the TaskBar in its usual location, on the bottom of my Win10 screen:
Ah, what a nice background wallpaper. But let’s stay focused on geeky computer stuff, not tropical islands! 🙂
Easiest way to get where you want is to use the Windows / Cortana search feature to look for “taskbar location”. As you can see, that gives you a handy shortcut straight to the right Control Panel:
You can see that it even autosuggested the completion “taskbar location on screen”. On the right is the System setting that’s required, so a click or tap and you’re ready to change things up:
There are a lot of settings you can tweak here, but notice on “Taskbar location on screen” that it shows “Bottom”. Turns out you can choose from Top, Bottom, Left and Right. Choose “Top” and… boom!
I like it! Takes some getting used to after decades of having it along the bottom, however. Oh, and there’s a shortcut if you want to fiddle further with your TaskBar settings: Right click on it and a menu pops up with a bunch of options:
Lots to consider but the very last option, Taskbar settings, can also jump you back to that Systems settings window too. Handy!
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about Windows since, well, not Windows 1.0, but a darn long time. Please check out my extensive Windows help area for hundreds of handy tutorials!
