diVISION Pinnable Taskbar Menu For Windows
WinPinMenu is a small portable application designed to replace functionality of Windows taskbar that was removed in recent releases of Windows 11: custom toolbars and quick launch. While created for this specific purpose, WinPinMenu very well can be used in any version of Windows (from 7 onwards). It allows users to pin popup menus to the taskbar displaying contents of arbitrary folders and launch items from there. It is extremely lightweight and runs only to display the menu, thus consumes no resources in the background, it neither requires shell extensions nor patching of Windows components.
Control Panel - shell:ControlPanelFolder
Links - shell:Links
Go to Releases, select an asset suitable for your operating system and download it.
WibPinMenu doesn't require an installation but if you have downloaded an installer just run it, for ZIP ditribution - extract the contents somewhere convenient, the application executable will be in bin subfolder.
You can pin as many instances of WinPinMenu to a taskbar as you wish (and there is space), each instance expects a folder path or ID as parameter to render it as a menu. The recommeneded procedure to achieve this is the following:
- Click with the right mouse button on the
WinPinMenu.exeand select "Create Shortcut" - Give the shortcut file a name which will be displayed on the taskbar button
- Open shortcut properties (right mouse button)
- Put the cursor in the "Target" field at the very end
- Press space bar
- Enter a folder path or ID to be rendered in the popup menu (for possible formats s. Folder Identifiers below)
- Optionally chage the icon of the shortcut (will be visible in the taskbar)
- Apply the changes
- Right click on the shortcut file an select "Pin To The Taskbar"
- After a new pin icon appears on the taskbar the shortcut file itself is no longer needed and can be deleted
Generally virtually anything that Windos Explorer would accept in its address bar can be used. Particularly WinPinMenu supports any of these identifier formats:
- Absolute path to a folder, i.e.
C:\Users\Michael\Links - Folder path containing environment variables, i.e.
%USERPROFILE%\Links - Named shell identifier like
shell:Links(for comprehensive list s. https://pureinfotech.com/windows-11-shell-commands-list) - Shell known folder CSIDL like
shell:::{323CA680-C24D-4099-B94D-446DD2D7249E}(for comprehensive list s. https://www.elevenforum.com/t/list-of-windows-11-clsid-key-guid-shortcuts.1075/)
For all formats applies: if an identifier containes spaces it must be enclosed in double quotes when used as WinPinMenu parameter.
Most items in the popup menus can perform extended actions available via context menu (right mouse click), even more of them are accessible via right mouse click when shift key is pushed.
Richt Click - Control Panel - shell:ControlPanelFolder
Richt Click + Shift - Links - shell:Links
Due to the nature of Windows menu API the application would display max. 15 levels of nested folders and up to 4095 items in each folder - if you call this a limitation.
To build WinPinMenu yourself you will need the following
- Windows Platform SDK
- Visual Studion (min. 2022)
- Platform Tools for C/C++ (available with any edition of Visual Studio)
- MFC/ATL Components (available with any edition of Visual Studio)
After cloning the repository you can either open the solution buildenv/WinPinMenu.sln in Visual Studio and hit "Build Solution" or - if you prefer command line - open developer command prompt in the root directory of the repo and run these 2 lines (make sure you are using Visual Studio 17 2022 CMake generator):
cmake -Sbuildenv -Bbuild\Cmake-Debug-x64 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
cmake --build build\Cmake-Debug-x64 --config DebugReplace "Debug" with "Release" in the above commands when building release version.
All contributions to development and error fixing are welcome. Please always use develop branch for forks and pull requests, main is reserved for stable releases and critical vulnarability fixes only.