Taskbar activation zone when using auto-hide feature in Win11 is blocking app contents

Question

I've been updated to win11 yesterday, and i found not only its taskbar gets wider than win10, the activation zone in windows 11 (or the zone to identify when to unhide the taskbar) gets way larger than windows 10, which only expands the taskbar when acutally touching the bottom 1-3 pixels instead of the full taskbar width.

For instance, when im using an app in maximized window mode, this enlarged detection zone cause buttons lower down the screen totally unusable, like in this pic.

I want to know if there's anyway I can do to change the taskbar expand behaviour back to windows 10 alike, touching the bottom 1-3 pixels to expand?

Answer 1

Thanks for sharing the screenshots, 108! I understand your concern, however Windows 11 currently offers no built-in setting or registry key to shrink that activation zone.

There's a workaround but that involves turning off “Automatically hide the taskbar” which will permanently show it.

So it’s a design limitation (intentional behavior) in Windows 11, not a bug. Though it clearly causes usability issues in certain apps.

I suggest that you provide a feedback, you can press Win + F → submit feedback:

“Auto-hide taskbar activation zone too large — overlaps app UI when maximized.”

Share it or find similar feedbacks and upvote them, which may help trigger developers to provide a fix in future updates.

Best regards,

Kimberly