Windows 11 is getting modernized taskbar thumbnails with new animations

Two and a half years ago, Microsoft shipped Windows 11 with a brand-new taskbar, which lost quite a few features when transitioning from Windows 10 to 11. Although Microsoft has already restored most of the user-requested capabilities (even added more), one aspect of the taskbar remains a bit undercooked: thumbnails.

For some reason, Windows 11 lost subtle animations, which were introduced in Windows 7 alongside taskbar thumbnails. Interestingly, Windows 11 plays a neat animation when you hover the cursor over the Task View button while app thumbnails open without any fancy effects. This odd omission is finally getting addressed in the latest Windows 11 preview builds.

Windows 11 build 26052 lets you enable thumbnail animations using the ViVeTool app. Still, the feature seems not ready for its prime time since Microsoft has not mentioned it in the release notes. There is also a bug where thumbnails appear in light mode while the rest of the taskbar is in dark mode (ignore the choppiness on the GIF below, it was captured on a virtual machine).

In addition to animations, Microsoft improved thumbnail titles for File Explorer. You can now see how many tabs are open in each File Explorer window alongside the currently open folder name. For example, "Downloads and 5 more tabs."

Here is how to enable taskbar thumbnail improvements in Windows 11 build 26040:

1. Download ViveTool from GitHub and unpack it wherever convenient.
2. Open elevated Command Prompt (run as Administrator).
3. Navigate to the folder containing the ViveTool files with the CD command. For example, CD C:\Vive.
4. Type vivetool /enable /id:29532725 and press Enter.
5. Restart your computer.

Other hidden changes in the latest Windows 11 preview build include a new accessibility feature that will make Windows 11 speak with your voice.

Thank you, @PhantomOfEarth, for sharing the findings and feature IDs.

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