FalconX is an open source program that can center the taskbar icons

[Karlston]

FalconX is an open source program that can center the taskbar icons

One area in Windows that has not evolved over different versions that much is the taskbar. Microsoft made the last fundamental change to it when it released Windows 7. The company made several minor adjustments in recent versions of Windows but that is about it. FalconX is an open source tool that adds new functionality to the operating system's taskbar.

 

The application is also known as Center Taskbar or Falcon, and we have reviewed it back in 2018 for the last time. Windows 7 users could also use a manual method to center taskbar items.

 

 

FalconX is a portable application. Run the program and your taskbar icons will now be placed smack-dab in the middle of the taskbar. This gives a dock-like experience and some users may find the icons easier to reach as a consequence.

 

The program sits on the system tray and you can access its options by right-clicking the icon and selecting "Settings".

 

Animation

You can choose the animation style from the Settings Screen. FalconX has 42 animations to choose from and if you don't like any of those, you can disable animation completely. There is an option to adjust the animation speed, which you can set by using the slider or enter the precise ms (Millisecond) number in the box.

Position

You can set the offset position of the taskbar, in terms of pixels. The default value is 0 and you may adjust it using a slider or by entering values manually; This is useful if you want to move the taskbar to a particular position, for e.g. towards the right side of the screen.

Taskbar Style

FalconX has three taskbar styles that you can choose from: Transparent, Blur and Acrylic. The last one is marked as unstable by the developer, but it worked pretty well during tests.

 

 

The styles are disabled by default, so technically the default Windows 10 style acts as a fourth option. The Blur style adds a frosted glass effect to the taskbar, while the Transparent setting offers an immersive experience. You can view the changes immediately without having to restart the application.

 

 

Here's what the Acrylic style looks like.

 

 

You can still apply Windows' own Taskbar customizations such as changing the icon size or enabling auto-hide.

 

Note: If you have auto-hide enabled for the taskbar and choose a style in FalconX, the taskbar will not apply the effect based on the wallpaper, rather it uses the color of the current window. So, if you're on a webpage with a white theme, the taskbar turns white-ish, and the system tray becomes nearly unreadable. This isn't an issue if you don't use auto-hide.

 

The refresh button reloads the application. You can enable the "Run at Startup" option to make the program load during Windows' boot. If you have the Search Bar enabled on your taskbar, you can enable the "Center between Start or Search" option in FalconX, and the program will center the icons between the two Windows UX elements.

 

FalconX works with multiple monitors as well. Though it is available for free from GitHub, an optional paid version is available from the Windows Store.

Closing Words

The program is quite light-weight and used about 2MB of memory and less than 1% of the CPU (usually about 0.2%) during my tests. When the Settings screen was in view, i.e., when the program switches from a background task to a foreground app, the memory usage was a bit higher but still under 7MB memory and 3% CPU usage.

 

 

Source: FalconX is an open source program that can center the taskbar icons (gHacks)