How in the Tech

Rearrange Those Taskbar Buttons

By Adam Myers ⋅ August 29, 2008 ⋅ Tags: Customization

As those that know me can attest, I’m pretty particular on how go about everything in my life. Things need to be just so or it really gets to me. I realize I have to learn to let things go, but 30 years in, I’ve yet to improve statistically on it. Such is the burden I bear right? One of my truly ridiculous habits involves the ordering of my applications across my taskbar in Windows. I expect each application to be in the correct order; to the point that if an application window in the middle of the chain should accidentally be closed – or worse, crash – I will restart the remaining programs in order to restore the proper taskbar order. Strangely, in my years I’ve learned I’m not the only one that likes things just so – at least for this scenario. Recently, I came across another free application to solve my troubles called Taskbar Shuffle.

Taskbar Shuffle isn’t as chaotic as the name sounds, rather it’s quite logical and controlled. What it does is allow you to reorganize the taskbar windows or even the system tray icons with a familiar drag and drop approach.

The feature list includes:

• Reorder the Taskbar buttons by simply dragging and dropping them
• Reorder the system tray icons in the exact same way
• Reorder tasks in a grouped button’s popup menu in the same way
• Middle-click to automatically close programs on your Taskbar
• Works with UltraMon Taskbars, if you use that
• Tweak the Taskbar button grouping settings

It’s small, it’s free, and works with all recent versions of Windows – including Vista.