Microsoft’s experiments with the taskbar in Windows 11 continue. After the company removed the taskbar reading animation that made the taskbar stand out, users discovered a new hidden configuration that allowed the system to load the taskbar faster.
Users of Windows 11 know how painful it can be for the operating system to restart the taskbar and how quickly it displays icons. Apparently, Microsoft wants to solve this inconvenience by launching the taskbar in parallel with Immersive Shell, which can effectively reduce the time the OS spends running the taskbar and enabling its icons.
How to make the taskbar load faster in Windows 11 build 25182?
- Download the Vive tools from its GitHub repository: https://github.com/thebookisclosed/ViVe/releases
- Extract the files in a convenient place, for example, C:\Vive.
- Start Windows Terminal as an administrator and switch to the Command Prompt profile.
- Navigate to the Vive folder using the CD command. For example, CD C:\Vive.
- Type vivetool /enable /id:39751186 and press Enter.
- Restart Windows Explorer to see the configuration in action.
- To revert these changes, use vivetool /disable /id:39751186
After enabling this configuration, you’ll notice that the taskbar starts up faster, but the soaring icon animation we mentioned earlier still doesn’t appear. We don’t know if Microsoft will bring this special effect back in the future, or if it’s just a simple A/B experiment.