Taskbar previews, the thumbnails of a running application that pop-up as your mouse over the application window in the task bar, aren’t new to Windows 7 – they were introduced in Vista actually – but their behavior have changed slightly. In Windows 7, task bar applications are grouped together if more than one iteration of the application is running. Meaning, rather than multiple browser windows showing in your task bar, they are all consolidated under a single large icon. Mouse-over that icon and you are presented thumbnails of the currently opened web sites within each.

You may like it, you may not. For me, it’s unnecessary as I just want to get into the running browser session quickly and rarely any of the particularly opened tabs. Thankfully, all three of the major browsers have the capability to disable this feature – though it’s easier to accomplish in some more than others.

Firefox

As you may expect, disabling of the previews requires diving into Firefox’s about:config – just type it into the location bar within the browser.

Filter for the key browser.taskbar.previews.enable and double click on the returned line to change the Value from true to false. This key will toggle the functionality on and off so it’s pretty simple to revert the change in the future!

Chrome

Google Chrome was the last of the three major browsers to obtain the taskbar previews functionality. Unfortunately, Google has a ways to go on their usability when it comes to making preferences tweaking – simply it’s not possible for many things! The only way I’ve found to disable the previews at the time of this article and version of Chrome is to leverage a clever hack centering around Windows Compatibility Mode of all things!

In Explorer, browse to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\ and right-click on chrome.exe, selecting Properties.

Under the Compatibility tab check the box that reads Run this program in compatibility mode for: then in the drop-down choose Windows Vista (Service Pack 2). Chrome will now run as if it were under Vista – that is to say, without the taskbar previews.

Internet Explorer 8

For completeness sake, the feature can also be disabled in IE even though I suspect most users interested in such a tweak won’t be in this browser much. Ironically, it’s probably the easiest one to change of the three!

Within IE8 access Tools->Internet Options. Off the General tab locate and click the Settings button in the Tab section.

From the Tab Browsing Settings dialog look for the check box that reads Show previews for individual windows in the taskbar and un-check.