Microsoft is finally restoring two of the most requested Windows taskbar features—drag-anywhere placement and compact button sizing—in the freshly flighted Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8493. Released to the Dev Channel on May 15, 2026, this Experimental Preview marks the public debut of what internal codenames suggest is “Project K2,” a focused effort to modernize yet untether the taskbar experience that has felt rigid since the OS launched in 2021.

The build grants testers explicit controls to anchor the taskbar to the bottom, top, left, or right edges of the screen. Alongside the positional flexibility, a new “Small taskbar buttons” toggle squashes the default icon height from 48 pixels down to a denser 32 pixels, reclaiming vertical real estate that productivity users have missed for years. The rollout is currently limited to a subset of Dev Channel Insiders as Microsoft employs its usual A/B testing mechanisms before a wider availability decision.

What’s new in Build 26300.8493

Diving into Settings > Personalization > Taskbar, testers now encounter a restructured Taskbar behaviors section. Three new dropdowns and a toggle replace what was previously a sparse set of alignment and auto-hide choices:

  • Taskbar location on screen: Options include Bottom (default), Top, Left, and Right. Selecting Left or Right rotates the taskbar vertically, stacking icons and system tray elements accordingly. Animations and flyout menus adapt smoothly, though widgets and News & Interests panels currently remain anchored to the primary display edge—a known quirk Microsoft flags in the release notes.
  • Taskbar alignment: This existing control continues to offer Left and Center, but now applies independently of the physical edge chosen. Left-aligning icons on a right-side taskbar, for instance, pushes them toward the bottom of the column.
  • Small taskbar buttons: A binary switch reduces the taskbar’s total height from the standard 48 dp to approximately 32 dp. Clock, system tray, and pinned app icons shrink proportionally, though touch targets remain compliant with Microsoft’s 24-pixel minimum for accessibility.

The build also refines animation curves when switching between locations—a subtle polish that prevents jarring layout pops. An early version of multi-monitor per-display taskbar profiles, where each connected screen can have its own edge preference, is hidden behind feature flag TaskbarMultiMonitorPersistentPlacement but hints at future expansion.

How to try it right now

Because this is a Controlled Feature Rollout, not every Dev Channel Insider will see the options immediately. To maximize your chances:

  1. Enroll a test PC in the Windows Insider Program’s Dev Channel.
  2. Check for updates and install Windows 11 Insider Preview 10.0.26300.8493 (ni_release).
  3. Run the Vivetool command vivetool /enable /id:46874615,39048016 if the toggles remain hidden after reboot. (The second ID governs small taskbar buttons.)
  4. Navigate to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar and explore the new controls.

Microsoft engineers caution that Experimental Preview builds can be unstable. Daily-driver machines should avoid this flight, especially given reports from early adopters of explorer.exe crashes when rapidly switching taskbar locations on multi-monitor setups.

A long road back to flexibility

Windows 11’s launch stripped away nearly every taskbar customization option that legacy power users took for granted. The taskbar was locked to the bottom of the screen with centered icons, and there was no built-in method to move it to another edge or shrink its size. Registry hacks like TaskbarAl kept some workarounds alive, but they often broke with cumulative updates. Third-party tools such as RoundedTB and ExplorerPatcher filled the gap for millions, yet each Patch Tuesday brought a wave of compatibility headaches.

Community pressure never relented. The Windows Feedback Hub entry titled “Bring back movable taskbar” amassed over 25,000 upvotes by 2024, making it one of the top five Windows requests ever. In a February 2025 Ask Me Anything session on Reddit’s r/Windows11, the product team acknowledged “engineering challenges with tablet posture reflow” as the primary reason for the delay. Build 26300 proves those challenges are finally being overcome.

Community reaction: relief mixed with caution

Windows Insiders on Microsoft’s official forums and independent communities like WindowsForum have responded with cautious enthusiasm. User taskbar_truther posted: “The small icons alone save me an inch of vertical space on my laptop. It’s like Windows 10 never left.” Another tester, deskviper, pointed out: “Moving the bar to the left edge instantly gave my ultrawide monitor a cleaner side-rail look. But I hope they fix the widget panel clipping before this hits Beta.”

Skeptics highlight that the feature is still experimental and could be pulled before reaching the General Availability channel. The reminder that early Windows 11 previews briefly showed a legacy volume flyout only to yank it after a few builds keeps expectations tempered. Still, screenshots proliferating across Twitter and Reddit show a polished implementation that feels closer to final than a rough experiment.

Under the hood: Project K2 explained

Internal job postings and leaked development branch names reveal that Microsoft has been working on “Project K2” since late 2024. The initiative’s goal is “adaptive shell chrome for large screens and multi-posture devices,” which aligns with the taskbar’s newfound mobility. K2 doesn’t just resurrect old Win32 APIs; it rebuilds taskbar positioning on top of the modern Windows UI (WinUI 3) compositor so that animations, transparency effects, and dynamic color adaptation function regardless of edge.

Key technical shifts include:

  • Abandoning the explorer-backed taskbar: The new taskbar is a standalone island applications, hosted by Taskbar.View.dll rather than injected into explorer.exe. This should keep crashes isolated and improve startup performance.
  • Vector-based icon scaling: Because the taskbar now supports two distinct heights and can render sideways, all pinned app icons are redrawn on the fly from vector assets. Developers of legacy Win32 apps that still ship bitmap ICO files see slight blurring—Microsoft encourages switching to SVG or PNG assets.
  • Orientation-aware touch targets: When placed on the left or right edge, the taskbar expands touch targets horizontally to maintain a minimum 44-pixel width, satisfying modern accessibility guidelines.

The small taskbar toggle reuses the same scaling engine, shrinking icons and text labels by a factor of 0.67. System fonts like Segoe UI Variable adjust weight automatically so the clock remains readable at the reduced size.

What’s still missing and what’s next

Build 26300.8493 isn’t a complete restoration. Power users note the absence of:

  • Never combine taskbar buttons: Icons still group by default. While a registry edit (NoTaskGrouping) exists, the UI toggle is missing.
  • Drag-and-drop onto the taskbar to pin: Still not supported—apps must be pinned via right-click.
  • Toolbars: Quick Launch, Address, and custom folder toolbars remain unavailable.
  • Multi-monitor independent taskbar placement: Only a single edge choice applies to all monitors for now; the hidden flag suggests multi-edges are coming.

Microsoft’s roadmap implies that folding these remaining elements into “Project K2” will take several more flights. The upcoming Beta Channel transition of build 26300 could bring broader testing, but a production release isn’t expected until the Windows 11 2026 Update (version 25H2) lands in the fall.

Why this matters for the Windows ecosystem

Taskbar flexibility is more than nostalgia. On devices with 3:2 or 16:10 aspect ratios—common in Surface laptops and tablets—a top or side taskbar can reclaim horizontal workspace for spreadsheets, code editors, and creative tools. Multi-monitor setups benefit from placing the taskbar on a vertical side monitor, keeping the main canvas free of persistent chrome. And small taskbar buttons directly address complaints from users migrating from Windows 10 who felt the taller bar wasted space without adding legibility.

IT administrators will also welcome the change. Centrally defined taskbar policies via Group Policy or Microsoft Intune can now specify edge location and small icons, reducing help-desk calls from users who inadvertently undocked the taskbar in earlier versions of Windows.

How to provide feedback

Microsoft urges testers to use the Feedback Hub (category: Desktop Environment > Taskbar) to report bugs and wish-list items. The team explicitly seeks logs from systems where the taskbar fails to redraw after an orientation change or where explorer.exe hangs during location switching. Upvoting existing feedback items helps prioritize fixes.

For those not yet in the Dev Channel, Windows Insiders can join at insider.windows.com with a free Microsoft account. Remember to back up personal data and consider a virtual machine or secondary device for testing.

The bottom line

Build 26300.8493 delivers the most significant taskbar overhaul since Windows 11’s debut. By giving users control over edge placement and icon size, Microsoft addresses years of community frustration without sacrificing the modernized aesthetic. While experimental and not bug-free, this preview signals that the Redmond giant is listening and acting. The full picture will emerge as the features march from Dev to Beta and eventually into everyday PCs, but the foundation looks solid.