Taskbar - Change Icon Button Width Size

How to Change the Windows 7 Taskbar Icon Width Size​

   Information

While Windows 7 offers the nice feature of grouping programs and combining them into a stack, not everyone enjoys this. Some may want just the icons without the stacking feature. In other words, it's like having "Never combine, hide labels" or "Combine when full, hide labels" option. Alternatively you can use this to manually set how big you want the buttons to be. This will show you how to customize how wide you want your pinned taskbar icons.

There's a simple registry hack and settings change you can do to do this.

Set the options

1. Open Taskbar properties.
2. In the "Taskbar Appearance" group, change the "Taskbar Button" option to your liking. Select "Combine if full" if you still want stacking, "Never combine" if you don't want stacking. Note this hack won't work if you use "Always combine, hide labels".

Adding/editing the registry entry

1. Press Windows Key + R to open the run command
2. Type int "regedit" (without quotes) and press OK
3. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Control Panel -> Desktop -> WindowMetrics
4. Find the "MinWidth" entry in the right pane.
5. If "MinWidth" is not there, right click on an empty space and select New -> String Value. Name this entry "MinWidth" (without quotes)
6. Double click on the MinWidth entry. If you want just the buttons to show, set this to 38 if you're using small buttons, 52 if you're using large buttons. Otherwise any value above 38 will work. If you set a value below 38, the buttons will behave oddly.
7. Log off and log back in or restart to see the changes.

Deleting/Uninstalling

1. Press Windows Key + R to open the run command
2. Type int "regedit" (without quotes) and press OK
3. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Control Panel -> Desktop -> WindowMetrics
4. Find the "MinWidth" entry and delete it.
5. Log off and log back in or restart to see the changes.

   Tip

A registry install script has been added for small or large icons and an uninstaller.


Download

Related Tutorials

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• How to Pin or Unpin a Folder to the Windows 7 Taskbar
• How to Pin or Unpin a Program to the Windows 7 Taskbar
• How to Lock or Unlock the Windows 7 Taskbar
• How to Move the Windows 7 Taskbar Location on the Desktop
• How to Show or Hide the Windows 7 Taskbar with Auto-hide
• How to Use Small or Large Icons on the Windows 7 Taskbar
• How to Enable or Disable Windows 7 Taskbar Button Grouping
• How to Allow or Prevent Taskbar Button Grouping in Windows 7
• How to Pin or Unpin a Drive to the Windows 7 Taskbar
• How to Resize the Taskbar in Vista and Windows 7
• How to "Pin to Taskbar" Transparent Invisible Icons for Programs in Windows 7

 

[rsvr85]

Gonna give this one a try, thanks xenol

 

[Jaxel]

Sadly, this script doesn't do what you would really want it to do.

What this script does is limit the size of the icon to a specific size, even if you have the setting to show text labels. If you like the text labels, what you really want is a script to limit the size of the icons when the program is NOT open.

 

[xenol]

What this script does is limit the size of the icon to a specific size, even if you have the setting to show text labels. If you like the text labels, what you really want is a script to limit the size of the icons when the program is NOT open.

Regarding the text labels, I mentioned it's basically like taking them off and showing just the icon. You can set the MinWidth entry to whatever you like.

As a side note, the MinWidth entry has been around since Windows 2000, and it apparently means the button width of a minimized window... or something. Since this only affects programs that are open, it won't affect pinned programs that are not currently running.

 

[thundt]

Change icons to correct, medium size (affects toolbar including QuickLaunch)

Right click desktop -> Personalize -> Window Color -> Caption Buttons = 21.

May have to reboot if they appear grainy.

cf. http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/14307-system-tray-icons-got-super-tiny.html

 

[toxicrat2]

This works perfectly, but is there any way I can set different programs to have different MinWidth values?

 

[daboross]

This will work for all settings except

This works for me all times, except when i have "use small icons" checked, and I have the task bar on the left. When I either don't have use small icons or don't have the task bar on the left it works great, but, sadly, I can't get this to work with those settings D:.

 

[nikev216]

Large is too big at my desktop, small is too small for Windows Media Center from an armchair, is there a way to set icon size in the taskbar midway between those 2 sizes. (with browser closed)

 

[Brink]

Hello Nikev,

Sure, you can set the MinWidth value to anything between 38 (small) and 52 (large) to see how it works. Just to note that this is for the icon width though.

 

[nikev216]

thanks, I just realized it's icon width

 

[Brink]

You're welcome.

 

[ibbeebee]

I just tried to approve your tute & the site wouldn't let me so will do it here your tutorial was very easy to follow thumbs up from me

 

[ibbeebee]

Is it possible to set a custom task bar height? I would like to reduce it a little but not by half. The difference between large & small icons is so great I would like a medium setting

 

[TDas777]

I tried this trick on windows 8.1 update. It worked!!
But in general icons on taskbar are normal, but when i launch a program, the icon becomes a bit distorted, some are changed like notepad, explorer. Please check the attached image.

Any fix for that?

 

[DavidGP]

Does this actually change the width of the taskbar buttons (in order to show more text) -- or only the icons width?

Edit: tried it, and it does the former. Even on Windows 10 -- but is only applied after a reboot.

 

[jonathancr]

Thanks ZENOL-BRINK and SevenForums for this tricks, I had a headache thinking how to do it, now, i want how to make the buttons transparent, The glass tiles do not like me much, windows it have much blur.

 

[jonathancr]

how to resize the width taskbar icons with legend?,
with tuneup it's possible to change the width as in this capture,

but, i want to do it on regedit mode. its possible?
A size of 90 pixels is fine.