Taskbar active icon underline customise

jrm1636 said:

Hello friends

I have a problem with telling apart icons on my taskbar between active and just pinned because my screen is damaged and has a permanent blue line along the bottom of the screen.

I know there is a way to customise the line and i would like to make it more visible so the active icons stand out more, or even a square like it was in win7

That "pinned-and-running-programs-shown-together-with-just-an-underline-to-distinguish-running" is one of the numerous UI regressions introduced with Windows 10. I can only suppose that at the time of XP development, Microsoft used to respect quality UI designers who emphasized usability first, and when Windows 8&10 appeared, MS was just trying desperately and wrongly to look cool and tabletish because of Android's rise. It was a major disaster, a big step back in the Windows user experience. Other basic things like sensible highlighting, coherent visuals for overlapping windows, window edges, scrollbars, UI tuning etc. went "out the Windows 10".

Solution: I restored the Quick Launch toolbar as soon as I upgraded to Win10, and decided to never pin anything to the taskbar; never have since then. Clear separation of taskbar items: launch buttons on the left, running programs center, and background system/utility programs on the right (tray). Also less clutter and better visibility with WinaeroTweaker and "Classic Start Menu".

ChrisRR said:

I restored the Quick Launch toolbar ... and never pin anything to the taskbar ...

that is a good alternative solution that can be done easily with no other software but it doesnt work for me because i use winkey+number keyboard shortcuts often to launch programs from the pinned icons and that wont work with quick launch it only uses pinned icons. thanks for sharing though this is very useful

tutorial Add or Remove Quick Launch toolbar in Windows 10

ChrisRR said:

That "pinned-and-running-programs-shown-together-with-just-an-underline-to-distinguish-running" is one of the numerous UI regressions introduced with Windows 10. I can only suppose that at the time of XP development, Microsoft used to respect quality UI designers who emphasized usability first, and when Windows 8&10 appeared, MS was just trying desperately and wrongly to look cool and tabletish because of Android's rise. It was a major disaster, a big step back in the Windows user experience. Other basic things like sensible highlighting, coherent visuals for overlapping windows, window edges, scrollbars, UI tuning etc. went "out the Windows 10".

Solution: I restored the Quick Launch toolbar as soon as I upgraded to Win10, and decided to never pin anything to the taskbar; never have since then. Clear separation of taskbar items: launch buttons on the left, running programs center, and background system/utility programs on the right (tray). Also less clutter and better visibility with WinaeroTweaker and "Classic Start Menu".

OMG, how true! Seems I have finally run into somebody who goes by the same principles.. quick launch is a wonderful thing along with small taskbar items, no grouping etc.. I also use a Win 98 style start menu, which gives me the option to group things together in an expandable-tree style according to my own needs and again, removing unnecessary clutter. For the longest time, I thought I was completely alone in this.. so, very happy to meet someone who thinks the same way - hi! :)