Disable Windows 7 taskbar grouping. Not combining.

Posted by Byran on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Byran
Published on 2010-07-26T21:06:34Z Indexed on 2010/12/24 16:56 UTC
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windows-7

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taskbar

I've look near and far but I cannot find a way (setting or hack) to prevent Windows 7 from grouping taskbar buttons together that are "related".

I'm not talking about the option to combine or collapse related buttons into one item. I can find that setting at: Taskbar and Start Menu Properties > Taskbar > Taskbar buttons:

This is what I an not looking for: How to Enable or Disable Windows 7 Taskbar Button Grouping

I'm talking about how Windows 7 seams to think that it's doing me a favor by grouping all my Google Chrome buttons together and grouping all my Explorer buttons together etc.

My workflow in Windows XP was to use the program Taskbar Shuffle to allow me to reorganize my taskbar buttons into related task "groups" I was working on.

For example:

[Start Button] | [iTunes] [Outlook Express] [Chrome Gmail] [layered design folder] [Photoshop CS4] [exported images folder] [website root folder] [Dreamweaver CS4] [Chrome www.MyAwesomeWebsiteImBuilding.com] [Chrome Recent web search] [some unrelated folder]

Windows 7 doesn't seem to let me do this. It wants to do:

[Start Button] | [layered design folder][exported images folder][website root folder][some unrelated folder] | [Chrome www.MyAwesomeWebsiteImBuilding.com]Chrome [Gmail][Chrome Recent web search] | [iTunes] | [Outlook Express] | [Photoshop CS4] | [Dreamweaver CS4]

Does anyone know of a tool or hack to prevent Windows 7 from grouping taskbar buttons?

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