v1.6.6

New

• Right-click an app in the panel for its own menu. You get the menu Windows gives that app: File Explorer's for a program, a shortcut or a folder (Open file location, Properties, Send to, 7-Zip and so on), the Start menu's for an app picked from the list (Run as administrator, Pin to Start, Uninstall). The menu key and Shift+F10 open it too. It is the classic menu, the one behind Show more options, because the Windows 11 menu is not open to other apps. The panel stays open while you use it, and a window a command opens, like Properties, stays open after the panel closes.
• The panel can come and go with an animation. In Settings, Panel animation has three choices: None (the default, as before), Peek, which raises the panel a little while its apps fade in, and From the taskbar, which slides it out from behind the taskbar like the Start menu and back in when it closes. The apps can be clicked from the first frame, and nothing moves if Windows' animation effects are off.

Thanks to u/FroztySeven on Reddit for asking for both.

Install

Download TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup.exe below and run it. If you already have it, the app offers the update when it opens. TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup-Offline.exe carries the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime inside, for PCs without internet.

v1.6.5

Fixes

• Saving a pinned group no longer leaves you without a taskbar. Changing a pinned group's icon or name restarts Explorer, so the taskbar shows the new icon. When you edited the group from its panel's pencil or its right-click Edit group, the app closed before Explorer was back, and sometimes it never came back. Now the app waits until the taskbar is back, and it only restarts the process that owns the taskbar.
• Apps picked from the list now take arguments and "Open as administrator". Until now only programs added with Browse… showed them in App options. Desktop apps from the list do too: they start through their own Start menu shortcut, so they keep whatever that shortcut already passes and add your arguments after it. Store apps, web and game links and folders still open through Windows, which allows neither, and the options window says so.

Thanks to @Leo9idas for reporting both (#2).

Install

Download TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup.exe below and run it. If you already have it, the app offers the update when it opens. TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup-Offline.exe carries the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime inside, for PCs without internet.

v1.6.4

Faster

• Clicking a group opens it almost instantly. Until now every click started the panel from scratch: .NET, WPF and a first paint, about 0.9 s. Now the panel stays loaded for a while after you use it (and while the cursor is near the taskbar, if Open on hover is on), and a click just hands it the group. Measured on real pinned groups: 0.1 to 0.2 s instead of 0.8 to 1 s. The first click after a long break still takes the second, because nothing is kept running for nothing.
• The waiting panel gives its memory back. While it waits off screen it compacts and trims itself, so Task Manager shows it at about 6 MB. It goes away on its own after ten minutes without use.

Thanks to everyone on Reddit who pointed out the delay.

Install

Download TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup.exe below and run it. If you already have it, the app offers the update when it opens. TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup-Offline.exe carries the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime inside, for PCs without internet.

v1.6.3

New

• A way to support the app. Taskbar Groups Fluent is free and has no paid version. If it saves you time, there is now a Support button in the bar at the bottom of the window and a card at the end of Settings, both opening buymeacoffee.com/munito. Nothing else changes and nothing is locked behind it.

Also

• The subtitle of the emoji picker in English no longer has a dash in it.

Install

Download TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup.exe below and run it. If you already have it, the app offers the update when it opens. TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup-Offline.exe carries the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime inside, for PCs without internet.

v1.6.2

Fixed

• The vertical panel fits its icons. A group laid out as a vertical column of icons opened with wide empty sides, because Windows held the window to the minimum width of a window with a title bar. It is now as wide as the icons and centred on its taskbar button, like the horizontal row.

Also

• The README now shows a recording on a real Windows 11 taskbar and up to date screenshots.

Install

Download TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup.exe below and run it. If you already have it, the app offers the update when it opens. TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup-Offline.exe carries the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime inside, for PCs without internet.

v1.6.1: A quick bar, and a version you can check at a glance

What's new

• A quick bar at the bottom of the window. Switch between light, dark or the Windows theme, between Spanish, English or the Windows language, and turn hover-to-open on or off, without opening the settings. The panel and the tray menu follow the same theme and language.
• See at a glance if you're up to date. The version sits at the right of that bar with a green tick when it is the latest; click it to check again. When there is a new one, an "Update now" button appears right there.
• A right-click menu for every pinned group. Right-click a group on the taskbar for "Open all" and "Edit group".

Under the hood

• No more 60 MB download on every update. Since 1.6.0 the installer downloaded the .NET 10 runtime each time, even when it was already installed; now it only does when it is missing.
• Offline installer. TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup-Offline.exe carries the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime inside, for PCs without internet or behind a proxy. Everyone else can keep using the normal one, which downloads the runtime only if it is missing.
• Ready for the Microsoft Store: the same app now runs from a Store package, where the Store takes care of updates.

Install

Download TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup.exe below and run it. If you already have it, the app offers the update when it opens.

v1.6.0: Panels your way, with real Windows 11 glass

What's new

• Real Windows 11 glass. The panel now shows what is behind it, blurred, in dark and light themes, and also when it opens by hovering. Before, it came out as a flat dark sheet.
• Four panel layouts. Grid, horizontal row, vertical column or list, with or without app names, in three icon sizes, and with the group's name above or below. The group editor shows a live preview as you change them.
• Edit a group from its panel. A pencil next to the group's name opens that group's editor straight away.
• An icon made of the group's apps. One click builds the taskbar icon from the first four apps in the group, and it keeps up as you add or remove them.
• Open them all at once. A button in the panel opens every app in the group.
• Groups inside groups. Add a group to another and it opens in its own panel.
• Per-app options. Rename an app inside a group, give it launch arguments or run it as administrator.
• Export, import and duplicate groups. A group travels as a single .tbgroup file.
• Coming from Taskbar Groups or AppGroup? Import your groups from either one.

Under the hood

• Moved to .NET 10, since .NET 8 support ends in November. If the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime is not on your PC yet, the installer (or the in-app update) downloads it, and Windows may ask for permission once.
• The panel no longer loads the WPF-UI library, so the installer is smaller.
• Uninstalling with the app open no longer leaves its folder behind.

Install

Download TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup.exe below and run it. If you already have it, the app offers the update when it opens.

v1.5.0: Open a group just by resting the cursor on it

What's new

🖱️ Open a group without clicking

Rest the cursor on a pinned group and it opens. No click at all.

Turn it on from the new Settings window (the gear in the main window) under Open on hover. You choose how long the cursor has to rest first, Fast, Normal or Relaxed, so sweeping across the taskbar never opens anything by accident.

• It opens in about a third of a second.
• It never takes the keyboard away from whatever you were typing in.
• It closes by itself as soon as the cursor moves away.
• Clicking a group works exactly as before.

It is off by default. Windows gives no signal when the cursor rests on a taskbar button, so this needs a small watcher that starts with Windows and lives in the notification area (look behind the arrow by the clock). Switch it off from its icon or from Settings, and it is gone, startup entry included.

To open that fast, a panel is loaded in advance while the cursor is near the taskbar, and released again about twenty seconds after the cursor moves away. Away from the taskbar, only the watcher is left running.

💬 Windows' own tooltip no longer covers the panel

Resting on an icon is exactly what makes Windows show the button's name in a small bubble, and it arrived half a second after the panel, right on top of it. It is now put away as it appears, for as long as a hovered panel is open. Every other taskbar button keeps its tooltip.

🧹 Updates and uninstalls leave nothing behind

The installer now stops the watcher and any preloaded panel before touching files, so an update never trips over files in use, and uninstalling removes the whole folder and the startup entry.

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Install: download and run TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup.exe. Already on 1.4.x? The app offers the update automatically on launch.

v1.4.5 — The flyout stays out of your way

What's new

🪟 The flyout no longer gets stuck on screen

Every so often the group panel stayed pinned on top of every window, and the only way to get rid of it was launching something from it.

It closed only when it lost the focus, and Windows does not always hand the focus to a flyout opened from a pinned shortcut. With no focus there was nothing to lose, so the panel simply stayed. It now takes the focus properly, and a second, independent check backs that up: if the focus was never granted, the first click anywhere outside the panel dismisses it. Escape closes it too, and opening a group clears any panel still on screen, so they can no longer stack up.

🙃 Upside-down icons in the app picker

Half the icons in the "Add app" list were flipped, and so were the ones cached inside groups. Only asymmetric logos gave it away, which is why it went unnoticed for so long: Windows hands its icons over with the rows either way round, and its own header does not reliably say which. They are read the right way round now, without the bright fringe that soft edges used to pick up.

Cached icons rebuild themselves the first time you open the app, so nothing to do on your side.

🎨 The app mark in the title bar

The window now shows the app's own mark next to its name.

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New: the app has a home page now, tbgf.munito.dev.

Install: download and run TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup.exe. Already on 1.4.x? The app offers the update automatically on launch.

v1.4.4 — The app gets its own icon

What's new

🎨 A proper app icon

Taskbar Groups Fluent no longer borrows the old icon: it now has its own mark, showing the group's flyout panel popping out of a pinned taskbar button.

The .ico carries 7 resolutions, and below 48 px a simplified drawing takes over (bigger panel and apps, a single taskbar button) so it stays sharp in the taskbar, the Start menu and Explorer lists instead of turning to mush.

It shows up on the app window, the flyout process, the installer, the Installed Apps entry and both READMEs. The mark is generated by code (tools/IconGen), so it can be reproduced or retuned at any size.

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Install: download and run TaskbarGroupsFluent-Setup.exe. Already on 1.4.x? The app offers the update automatically on launch.