(Guest Post by Krupesh Muthukumar)
The taskbar is one of the most under appreciated features in Windows, and here are 6 ways to add super power to the humble taskbar. Read them below and make your workflow more productive.
1. Pin anything to the taskbar with Taskbar Items Pinner
Windows 7 Taskbar Items Pinner lets you pin anything ranging from files and folders to web pages to your taskbar. Upon launching the application, you can choose to pin any pre-defined links/folders like the Control Panel or Program Files. Alternatively, you can browse to a custom path and pin that file or folder to your taskbar.
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In addition to letting you pin anything to the taskbar, the application also shows the currently pinned items and allows you to unpin them.
2. Get Gmail Alerts In System Tray
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Google’s official Gmail Notifier puts your inbox unread count right in the system tray. Clicking on the Gmail Notifier system tray icon will show you a preview of your messages in the inbox. Clicking on these messages opens them in the default browser on your computer.
3. Monitor bandwidth usage with Networx
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Networx is a free bandwidth monitoring application for Windows. Once you have Networx installed, you can right click on the taskbar and choose Toolbars > Networx Desk Band to display information about your network traffic – the current transfer rate or the weekly/monthly/daily traffic.
4. Control iTunes playback from the taskbar
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If iTunes is your media player of choice, this tip is for you. Right click on any empty space in the taskbar, click Toolbars and choose iTunes. The next time you minimize iTunes, you can still control song playback from the system tray using the appropriate audio control buttons that appear in the iTunes toolbar.
5. Middle click empty space to show the desktop
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Windows 7 has this neat button in the bottom right that lets you see the desktop immediately when you click on it. You can instead choose to see the desktop when you middle click on the empty space in the taskbar. Just download 7 Taskbar Tweaker and check the option shown in the screenshot above.
6. Open Recycle Bin from the taskbar
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To pin the Recycle Bin to the taskbar, first create a shortcut in your desktop to C:\Windows\explorer.exe shell:RecycleBinFolder. Go to the properties and use the customization options to pick the Recycle Bin icon for the shortcut. Then, right click on it to pin it to the taskbar. Voila! It’s done.
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If you’ve got any more tips on making better use of the taskbar, tell us in the comments section below!
(Guest Post by Krupesh Muthukumar)
Post from: Killer Tech Tips
6 Things You Can Do From Windows Taskbar
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