Can this please be a new feature in the next build? I've been annoyed by this for so long now. It's such a simple feature.
Can you please change notifications and autohide taskbar behavior?
Ran across this locked thread about this. Basically you have to either nerf any application that notifies you or really, turn them all off to avoid the taskbar constantly failing to autohide because ANY application has notifications.
First, I think the primary reason this is so annoying is because the taskbar becoming visible with auto hide enabled does not behave the same way as when you have autohide disabled. When always visible it will NEVER obscure open windows. When autohide is on and it pops up it hides a strip of the desktop and any window portions being drawn in that area. This can cause some very awkward problems as many key elements like confirm, cancel buttons are often at the bottom of screens. One of the primary reason folks enable this is to maximize available desktop space for working so this means they are even more likely to face obscured GUI elements due to this behavior.
Second, and I think more importantly, something else that makes this very frustrating even for a very experienced power user is that when setting taskbar behavior in taskbar settings there is NOTHING that indicates to you notifications will be a part of this behavior. You turn it on and expect the thing to hide unless you need it then inevitably a few minutes later the damn thing is visible again even though you haven't moused to the bottom of the screen. Then when you go back to check the settings it is still enabled. There are no options on that interface settings page to give you a clue that notifications play a role in auto hide behavior. No note, not hot link to notifications settings. no option to control notification behavior with respects to task bar auto hide behavior etc... And it is not clear that the reason it is becoming visible is due to notifications other than through trial and error or googling to find out what the hell is happening.
Perhaps I am wrong but I think perhaps what most of us expect is that the taskbar will function the exact same in terms of application highlights etc... just that when we choose autohide we will only see that information WHEN WE CHOOSE TO VIEW THE TASK BAR. By selecting autohide we are telling the system to keep the taskbar out of view unless we mouse to the side of the screen it is anchored too.
TLDR - A) make the taskbar auto hide visible behavior match non auto hide behavior in that when visible it does not obscure any desktop information. B) add taskbar visibility behavior due to notifications as a part of the taskbar settings menu so that it is 1) clear notifications will over ride your request to hide the taskbar unless you disable notifications and 2) that you can control all elements rated to taskbar behavior from the TASKBAR SETTINGS menu C) allow a middle ground that maintains taskbar notification information when visible but keeps notifications from making the taskbar visible.
Windows for home | Windows 10 | Settings
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
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Anonymous
2020-04-29T01:03:24+00:00 -
Anonymous
2020-06-22T15:05:32+00:00 lol,
Just switched from mac to windows for work.....
this was the first issue that I came across... seems like an easy fix no?
surprisingly annoying. I see I am not the only one :)
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Anonymous
2021-01-04T12:58:31+00:00 This behaviour is killing the entire reason for taskbar auto-hide. When trying to work on something in a group with maximum screen area and ability to efficiently switch between multiple applications in a Teams conversation, the Teams notifications brings the taskbar onto the screen constantly and there is then no point in trying to autohide. I understand that this is by design in Windows 10 (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/stop-taskbar-from-not-autohiding-when-receiving/0096e543-d7db-46ce-8792-2cf9782c7212) however is is a step backward as other OS including previous versions of Windows do not suffer from this design limitation.
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Anonymous
2020-07-21T07:43:10+00:00 Its been a quarter of a year and no one from Microsoft has replied to this thread. Sad. This problem is extremely annoying for us all and we are being ignored. I keep getting notifications from all kinds of apps, even random websites that have no social feature enabled. My taskbar is basically always visible with some random dumb orange notification at the bottom that I can't seem to turn off.
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Anonymous
2020-08-23T20:52:16+00:00 I concur, even on Android and iOS know that notifications should hide themselves swiftly after the first appearance, let alone that on a windows PC where we set the taskbar to auto-hide for more screen real estate.
What Microsoft probably still doesn't know is that even after switching off "Get notifications from apps and other senders", the taskbar still pops up with highlighted icons once apps have new events.
As for the solution, Microsoft could of course still highlight the app icons using a yellow color, just don't let the taskbar pop up! Or, let it pop-up like 1 pixel so we'll know something's going on.
On the other hand, if there's already a notification zone at the right hand side of the screen, why do you have to highlight the app icon anyways? This is a fundamental design ideology flaw.