Add A Quicklaunch Toolbar to Windows 8 Desktop

BY: ERICA ANN |

March 3 2013 5:26

One of the best features I found in Windows 98 and XP was the Quick Launch Toolbar. It was still around in Windows 2000 and Windows ME, and Vista, but eventually in Windows 7 it was taken out (by default). With a hack in Windows 7, you could bring it back. In Windows 8, it was gone again. With a simple few clicks, you can bring it back to your desktop in Windows 8.

quick launch

To change it back to something more familiar as in Windows XP, Right click on any open part of the taskbar and choose Properties from the menu.

properties

From the Taskbar buttons drop-down menu, you will want to choose “Never Combine” which will make every window show up as a separate button. These are the settings I use:

taskbar properties

Now, after pressing OK, you should see the taskbar look like the way it did before – but we are still not finished.

The “pinned” icons are still sitting on the taskbar. You can easily remove them by right-clicking and choosing “Unpin this program from taskbar”

Now to add the Quick Launch Bar back to the Windows 8 Taskbar. Right click on the taskbar and click on Unlock the Taskbar and -> Toolbars and New Toolbars

toolbar

Paste the following into the locations bar

%appdata%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

And hit enter. The Folder Location at the bottom will say quick launch and your Taskbar will show a quick launch bar in the right which you can click and drag over to the left.

The normal Quick Launch that I’m used to doesn’t have text, so I right-click on the dotted lines and uncheck “Show Text” as well as “Show Title” from the menu.

Drag the quick launch around to your liking.

Now, this might look much better to you –  a new quicklaunch bar and the taskbar back to the vista/xp way.