A few weeks ago, Microsoft brought back the redesigned system tray from the Windows 11 preview from the development channel. At the time, we called this redesign effort “half improvement, half weakening”, as improvements were mixed with removed features such as the ability to drag icons into and out of the taskbar.
Microsoft promised to continue improving the system area to address customer feedback, and it seems that the company has delivered on that promise in short order.
Windows 11 build 25211 brings a much-improved system tray with better visuals and previously missing features.
The icon now has a circular focus area that matches the rest of the buttons on the taskbar, the overflow menu appears “pleasantly” animated, and the tooltips follow the system theme.
While the visual changes and consistency were great additions to Windows 11 that were much needed, many users seemed more concerned with arranging icons by dragging them around, and now this feature is back too, and it has a divider to help put the icons in the right place.
The redesigned system tray in the Windows 11 development release
Microsoft says that the updated system tray is preliminary, which means that users should expect more changes and improvements in the future. Furthermore, it doesn’t work for everyone. Fortunately, if you are running the latest development version of Windows 11, you can use the ViveTool app to force the redesigned system tray to be enabled.
Important: Before experimenting with early implementations of new features, especially with third-party applications like ViveTool, back up your data. The safest option is to wait for Microsoft to ‘naturally’ enable the new features on your system, or not to use the preview version at all.
