How to Resize Taskbar on Windows

Toolbar (taskbar) on Windows can be dragged bigger or smaller without technical knowledge! You can make this bar look bigger or smaller, not hidden or vice versa, even place it at the top or side of the screen. This article will show you how to do all of that.

Table of Contents

Steps

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Unlock the toolbar. To change the size of the toolbar on your Windows desktop, make sure it is not locked. To check if the bar is locked, right click on any empty space on the toolbar and make sure there is no check mark next to the word ‘Lock the taskbar’. If yes, click ‘Lock the taskbar’ to unlock it.

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Place the mouse pointer on the border at the top of the toolbar. The pointer will turn into a two-way arrow.

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Click and drag the border of the toolbar upwards. This is the step to increase the size of the toolbar. Or, you can drag the toolbar’s border downwards to reduce the size.

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Change the position of the toolbar. You can change the position of the toolbar to the right, to the left, or to the top of the screen. Simply click and drag the toolbar up, left, or right of the screen.

This will help when the toolbar is covering something at the bottom of the screen. You can temporarily move the toolbar away.

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Turn off Auto-Hide. Sometimes, your computer may automatically hide (automatically hide) the toolbar from the screen. If this bothers you, follow these steps to turn off Auto-Hide:

Right-click anywhere in the toolbar.
Click Taskbar settings (or Properties on Windows 7 & 8) at the bottom of the pop-up menu. ^{[1] X Research Source}
Click the switch near the words “Automatically hide the taskbar in desktop mode”.
Click the switch next to “Automatically hide the taskbar in tablet mode”.

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Make the toolbar icons look smaller. If you want the icons in the toolbar to look smaller, follow these steps:

Right-click anywhere in the toolbar.
Click Taskbar settings (or Properties on Windows 7 & 8) at the bottom of the pop-up menu. ^{[2] X Research Source}
Click the switch near the words “Use small taskbar buttons”.

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Click

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in the lower right corner (only on Windows 8 & 10). This icon looks like a parenthesis pointing upwards. This is the step that shows all the little icons hidden in the pop-out box. You can control whether the icon will appear in the toolbar or hidden icon box by clicking and dragging the icon from the toolbar to the hidden icon box and vice versa. This step allows you to move some icons off the toolbar to make more room in the bar.

Warning

Increasing the size of the toolbar can be a waste of space that should be useful to you.

Steps

Warning

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