Not much interesting happened at Microsoft’s Surface Event 2022, unless you like an incrementally update for the Surface Laptop 5, a Surface Pro 9 with 5G Arm processing, or a rather cheeky Surface Studio 2+. At Ignite, things were much more eye-catching, and you can see our coverage here. During his keynote, Microsoft CEO also teased a concept UI that shows a floating taskbar for Windows 11.
Eagle-eyed viewers could see the unusual taskbar with the widgets and system tray shown at the top of the desktop. The Windows 11 floating taskbar was shown running on Microsoft’s new Surface Studio 2+.
That device already allows users to change the size of taskbar icons when moving the display. It is unclear if the floating taskbar will be restricted to specific hardware or function across all Windows 11 PCs.
Testing?
The idea of a moving taskbar has been ahem, floated, before. In fact, Windows 11 Insiders have previously said they were testing a floating taskbar in August. This version had a more rounded design. Microsoft said at the time it was a bug:
“There are a few bugs like this that change the UI in various ways,” explained Brandon LeBlanc, a senior program manager at Microsoft. “It’s not something we’re doing any A/B testing on.”
It now seems Microsoft is indeed at least working on this feature, and for at least some of its devices. Either way, if the floating taskbar is real, it likely won’t arrive on Windows 11 for some time. Although, I wouldn’t rule out an appearance on the Insider Program before the end of the year.
Tip of the day: The Windows Sandbox gives Windows 10/11 Pro and Enterprise users a safe space to run suspicious apps without risk. In out tutorial we show you how to enable the Windows Sandbox feature.
