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Right now I use UltraMon to extend my taskbar across multiple monitors. So windows on the first monitor show up on the taskbar on the first monitor, and windows on the second monitor show up on the taskbar on the second monitor.

However, UltraMon does not support "Task Grouping", a feature in Windows since XP. Basically if you have many windows open, it will group together windows from the same app in a single taskbar entry. So if I have 22 explorer windows open, I'll only see a single explorer entry, and if I click it, a menu of the 22 windows shows up. Ultramon doesn't support this, instead I see 22 taskbar entries.

Are there any utilities (or built in to windows 7 ways?) that will extend the taskbar across multiple monitors, and support task grouping on the secondary monitors?

Utilities I've tried that don't provide this feature:

  • UltraMon
  • Actual Multiple Monitors
  • MultiMonitor Taskbar PRO (doesn't look right in Win 7)
  • DisplayFusion
  • MonMan (doesn't even run in Win 7)
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5
  • displayfusion also does not group the apps, just as a sidenote
    – akira
    Commented May 1, 2010 at 7:23
  • I also tried DisplayFusion, just because I was desperate, and I can confirm it doesn't support this either. I wonder why nobody ever added this feature.
    – davr
    Commented May 2, 2010 at 5:45
  • It's not built into Windows 7, by design: keznews.com/4924_Windows_7_Tasksbar_Multi-Monitor_Support
    – Mark Allen
    Commented May 4, 2010 at 19:23
  • Yes, windows designers are too dumb to figure out the very best way to do it, so instead they don't do it at all. For me personally, having two taskbars (one on each monitor) makes my daily work much easier. I just wish one of the 3rd party taskbars was able to duplicate all the featuers of the main windows taskbar.
    – davr
    Commented May 6, 2010 at 2:27
  • 1
    @George Edison: It's very useful when you have many windows open from the same program. Say for example I have 12 explorer windows open, if they all take up their own spot on the taskbar, it means each individual spot will be much smaller, making it harder to find my one Firefox window.
    – davr
    Commented May 17, 2010 at 17:45

4 Answers 4

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+200

There are reports that Stardock's ObjectDock Plus ($19.95) can do what you ask.
This is the commercial version, not the free one.

I can't vouch for it personally, and unfortunately it seems impossible to try.
The Pro version doesn't seem to be available for download as shareware.

You might try to get in touch with their Sales department to ask this question.
Their contact form can be found here.

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4
  • Can I make it look like a normal windows taskbar? All their screenshots show it working more like a OS X dock, where you have icons with no text, and they do that growy-shrinky thing when you mouse over them.
    – davr
    Commented May 6, 2010 at 22:15
  • @davr: The doc for it says "The background (skin) of the dock can easily be changed with hundreds of additional skins available on-line to make your dock appear as anything you'd like it to be".
    – harrymc
    Commented May 8, 2010 at 6:42
  • @davr: Skinning Support is available in ObjectDock Freeware, so you can test this part of it without shelling out $19.95.
    – harrymc
    Commented May 8, 2010 at 6:46
  • Well...this is the only answer that came close. I still haven't investigated all the skins to see if I can get one that matches windows exactly, but it's the only product that provides task grouping, so accepting it.
    – davr
    Commented May 11, 2010 at 3:48
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I think Ultimate Windows Tweaker may do this for you (http://www.thewindowsclub.com/ultimate-windows-tweaker-v2-a-tweak-ui-for-windows-7-vista) but as I'm not using 7 in work I can't test it out, sorry.

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2
  • i have not found any relevant checkbox in uwt so far.
    – akira
    Commented May 6, 2010 at 12:08
  • Don't know why someone voted this up, as far as I can tell, UWT doesn't even give you a second taskbar, nevermind task grouping.
    – davr
    Commented May 9, 2010 at 20:06
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Another one to check might be zBar... I don't have access to a second monitor at the moment to try it out and see if the grouping of tasks works how you'd expect, looks like you've pretty thoroughly gone over all the alternatives and it may be that this is a "Windows-only" feature.

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-1

For me, http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/ - it's a great utility and I recommend giving it a try.

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2
  • 1
    'Right now I use UltraMon' + 'However, UltraMon does not support "Task Grouping"' ...
    – akira
    Commented May 6, 2010 at 12:04
  • Yeah, specific purpose of this question is to find taskbars that support "Task Grouping",
    – davr
    Commented May 6, 2010 at 22:10

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