- A new menu bar could be brought to Windows 11
- It would come in the form of an optional base for the Command Palette in PowerToys.
- This would contain shortcuts to your favorite tools as well as system monitoring information, but for now it’s just a concept.
Windows 11 may not let you move the taskbar to the top of the screen, but it could give you a top menu bar as a sort of substitute for that ability, and that’s an idea I like, but it’s proving a bit divisive.
Windows Central highlighted this potential new development, and I should make it clear from the start that this is a proposed addition to PowerToys, Microsoft’s suite of companion tools for Windows 11, and not a possible change to the operating system itself.
The new feature is an optional dock for the Command Palette, which is one of the PowerToys tools; It’s essentially a launcher for Windows 11. (Command Palette will eventually replace the Run utility, although it’s still a work in progress for now.)
Such a dock comes in the form of a menu bar that can be located at the top (or sides, or even bottom) of the Windows 11 desktop environment. It can contain information readouts for your system, such as a small display for CPU usage or internet speed, as well as allowing you to pin your favorite functionality and PowerToys utilities to the bar.
As usual with PowerToys, if you really want to delve into the feature, there will be all sorts of customization tricks possible, including altering the appearance of the dock with a different background or making it use a light or dark theme.
Analysis: Taskbar replacement
So, this is something of a PowerToys-centric taskbar alternative that you can deploy anywhere as outlined, giving you faster and more convenient access to these utilities, plus a variety of functionality, along with at-a-glance screens for system information.
I like the idea and would welcome this addition to PowerToys, although some people aren’t too happy about the idea of losing desktop real estate to a second bar (with the taskbar already at the bottom of the screen, of course). That’s fair enough and you don’t need to activate the command palette dock if you don’t want it. (Assuming it ever gets made, that is, we don’t know if this project has any basis yet, it’s just a concept at this point.)
The Dock might work better, perhaps, if the bar only appeared visible if you mouse over the top (or side) area of the screen where it is located.
There are others who approve of this idea in principle, but would prefer it to be implemented as a full taskbar replacement. Which means you can add Windows 11 taskbar items as ‘widgets’ to this base and then permanently hide the taskbar, using it instead (and placing it wherever you want, of course). Realistically, though, I don’t see that happening: PowerToys isn’t designed to replace Windows 11 functionality, it’s a bundle of extras.
Given that Microsoft seems to have turned the page in terms of improving Windows 11, promising to eliminate bugs and improve performance levels and overall responsiveness, perhaps this new attitude could include giving us long-awaited abilities like moving the taskbar, anyway? I doubt it, given how far we’ve come with this functionality remaining banished from Microsoft’s newest operating system, but I guess you never know.
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