To be able to use your computer more effectively, you should be familiar with as many of its features as you can.

This tutorial covers the basics of the Taskbar and is a continuation of the tutorial, Windows Basics – The Start Button and Start Menu.

The Taskbar is the bar that sits on the bottom of the screen that contains a lot of useful features to help you use your computer.

The Start Button

The Taskbar contains the Start Button, which when pressed brings up the Start Menu, which was covered in the previous tutorial.

The Quick Launch Bar

The small icons to the right of the Start Button are in an area of the Taskbar called the Quick Launch Bar. The Quick Launch Bar contains shortcuts to programs (apps) on your computer that are frequently used. You can add and remove them yourself and when you install programs, an icon may appear here once the installation is complete.

You can change the Quick Launch Bar to suit your needs. For example, I don’t access Windows Media Player through its icon. I usually browse the music or video files in Windows Explorer and double-click on the ones I want to play. For this reason, I usually delete the icon for it in the Quick Launch Bar to make room for other programs. Microsoft has stopped supporting Internet Explorer as they have a new Internet browser in Windows 10 called Microsoft Edge, so I usually install Firefox and delete the icon for Internet Explorer.

To delete an icon from the Quick Launch Bar, right-click on it and then left-click on “Unpin this program from the taskbar”.

You can add an icon from either the desktop or the Start Menu. Find the icon you want, for example, Microsoft Word. It could be an icon on your desktop or on the Start Menu. On the Start Menu, you’ll probably find it under Programs>Microsoft Office. To copy the icon to the Quick Launch Bar, hold down the Control (Ctrl) Key on your keyboard as you click and drag the icon down to the Quick Launch Bar. You need to place the icon between the other icons that are already there until you see a vertical black line appear with your mouse cursor, then let go of the mouse and the Ctrl Key.

If you don’t hold down the Ctrl Key, it will remove the icon from its original place. You should never remove it from the Start Menu. You should keep it in both places. If you ever decide that you don’t use a program often enough to have it on your Quick Launch Bar, you can remove it knowing you still have the icon in the Start Menu when you do need it.

Note that in Windows 10, you need to find the icon for a program on your Start Menu, right-click on it and move your mouse cursor up to More. When the side menu appears, click on Pin to Taskbar.

The Main Section

The main area of your Taskbar is for keeping track of your open programs. It will display a button for each program that is open (this excludes programs running in the background like your antivirus program). Windows provides this feature to make it easier to switch between your open programs. Just click on the button for the program you want.

Note: The picture above does not have the Quick Launch Bar showing.

The Taskbar in Windows 7 or above has a different method of keeping track of the open programs.

When you open a program in Windows 7, it displays a smaller button than Windows XP for each open program. Also, if a program has an icon on the Quick Launch Bar, it won’t show a separate icon for the program once it’s open, it will simply place a box around the existing icon to show that it is open. If you have more than one window open at a time for that program, like with Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer in the picture above, it will change so that the box around it looks like there are other boxes behind it.

Windows 10 puts a line under the icons to indicate that the program is open, and puts a box around the active window – meaning the program that you are working in at the time.

You can right-click on any of these buttons and choose to close the window.

The System Tray

The next section of the Taskbar is the System Tray. It contains the icons for some of the programs that are running, the Date and Time area, and the Show Desktop Button.

Icons in this area are usually for things that run in the background, like antivirus software. You will also find the icon you use to safely remove hardware and eject media, which is mostly for flash drives and external hard drives plugged into your USB ports. You will also see notifications pop up from here in the form of a talk bubble.

Windows XP and earlier versions only displayed the time in the Date and Time section, whereas later versions display the date too. You can Click on the Date and Time section to see a small calendar.

To change the date and/or time, click on “Change the date and time settings”. In Windows 10, you will have to right-click on the Date and Time section and click on “Adjust date/time”.

The Show Desktop Button is a small rectangle on the far right of the Taskbar. When clicked, it clears away any open windows and shows the desktop. If you press it again, it will restore all the open windows again, with the one you were working on up front. This button in Windows 10 is a lot slimmer, but it is still there.

 

Now that you have a better understanding of this important feature of Windows and most other operating systems, you might want to look at some of the other tutorials here at TechSavvyAuthor.net.