Windows 10 Separate multiple program windows on tasbar

[Einacht Wolf]

I'm editing a game in Notepad and all the Notepad windows are together on the taskbar. They are not grouped into 1 button, that setting is off in the Taskbar Properties. Instead, on the taskbar, if I try to move a Notepad window to the other side of Chrome window, all of the Notepad windows come with it. I want to separate them so I don't close the ones I'm not ready to save. This happens with any program.

Pictures attached show 3 combinations of my taskbar, where Notepad and Chrome, no matter where I move them, have buttons next to each other of the same program. How do I stop this from happening? I am comfortable editing the Registry if needed, but I'd need to know the location(s).

 

[crustycrab]

Natively, I don't think that's possible. You would need some 3rd party software for that. Stardock has something that will allow you to group open windows together and move around as needed. I think it's called "Fences" but not sure.

 

[patcooke]

If I understand you correctly you need to set taskbar properties to "always combine."

 

[Neemobeer]

I believe he wants them to be completely separated. Having the two notepad.exe processes not located at the same place on the taskbar. I also don't believe that it's possible to do that.

 

[patcooke]

Got it.

 

[Neemobeer]

After some tinkering I can at least tell you that it appears Microsoft auto groups items in the taskbar by process name. As an example I created a copy of the program Geany.exe and was able to separate them in the taskbar. This isn't an ideal solution and you can't do it with signed Microsoft binaries but at least it tells us how Microsoft is handling it. Continuing my digging it looks like all of the settings that control the taskbar are located here HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced There is an interesting key named SeparateProcess which I tried enabling without any change, so it may have another meaning.