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Is there a way to arrange windows within the same application in the taskbar of Windows 7?

Right now we can freely adjust each application's position in the taskbar, but within the app itself the windows can't be reordered, for example multiple windows of firefox or chrome.

6 Answers6

78

You can do this with 7 Taskbar Tweaker.

Just check the box Drag to reorder under Thumbnails section:

screenshot

As stated on the app, it's allowing you to reorder from the thumbnail: hover the app on the taskbar and wait until the windows' thumbnail is shown, then click-and-drag the thumbnail to reorder it. The corresponding window on the taskbar will follow the order of the thumbnail.

The previously mentioned Taskbar Shuffle doesn't support Windows 7 yet, to my knowledge.

Andrew T.
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J F
  • 1,646
29

This is possible, but quite hacky.

Lets consider, you have three windows of the same application: A, B and C. You want them to be shown on task bar as [A][B][C], while they are shown in some other order. To achieve this do the following:

  1. Activate the windows one by one in the order, which is reversal of the desired order, i.e. activate window C, then B, then A
  2. Now window A is on top, window B is under A and window C is under B
  3. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Windows Task Manager
  4. Find explorer.exe process in Processes tab, select it and press End Process
  5. Choose File->New Task (Run...), enter explorer and click OK.
  6. When started, explorer arranges taskbar buttons according to the z-order of windows, so buttons will be arranged as [A][B][C]

This method will probably kill all Windows Explorer windows. If you need to preserve them, do the following:

  1. Press Win+E to open Windows Explorer
  2. Go to Organize->Folder and search options->View->Advanced settings:
  3. Check Launch folder windows in separate process checkbox and click OK

Now, if you have at least one Windows Explorer window, then at step 4 of the original instruction you will see two explorer.exe processes: one responsible for taskbar and another responsible for Windows Explorer windows.

To distinguish which one is which, turn on Command Line column in Task Manager (View->Select Columns...>Command Line). The explorer.exe process responsible for taskbar (i.e. the one you need to kill) will not have any arguments in command line, so its command line will look like C:\Windows\explorer.exe. The other explorer.exe process will have much longer command line looking like this: C:\Windows\explorer.exe /factory,{ceff45ee....

Mikhail Vladimirov
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4

You can use RBTray to hide all windows and then show them in the order as you wanted.

zwhconst
  • 151
2

No. Unfortunately, it is not possible yet. Opened instances of the same application are combined and their live thumbnails cannot be reordered.

Note that even if you disable Combine (Right-Click Taskbar -> Properties -> Taskbar panel -> Taskbar Buttons dropdown), an application with several instances opened will still move as one group.

A Dwarf
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0

Windows 11 answer

You can use the Taskbar Thumbnail Reorder Windhawk mod.

First, download and install Windhawk from https://windhawk.net/. Then, go to "Mods" at the upper right, search for "Taskbar Thumbnail Reorder" and install it.

Paul
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0

If you just want to re-order firefox or chrome, hitting F11 to put a browser into full screen mode will put that browser window to the far right of the list. It can be a little tedious, but if you want one specific window to be on the far left, just F11 all of the browser windows except the one you want on the left.

Stratos
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