The following are issues that I've observed since Windows 11 that I did not encounter in Windows 10.

After a while, pinned program icons that do not have an active window reposition themselves upwards so that you can only see half of them. If you click on them, it opens the program and that version of the icon is fine. If you close the program, it goes back to being cut off. Changing the button grouping settings to another setting and back fixes the issue temporarily.

The mirrored tray icons do not update unless the mouse cursor is positioned over the general area. It's hard to tell, but I'm pretty sure it can go minutes at a time without a frame update. Leaving the mouse stationary over the icons will pause the frame updates until you move the cursor in or out of a different icon which changes the highlighting and forces a redraw.

The "Control Center" icons are very large when using a tall taskbar.

As a side note, I am currently using the following project to modify the original Windows 11 taskbar which may or may not affect the above: https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher

Attaching troubleshooting report...

The second issue where the tray icons don't update does seem better or fixed.
The third issue is up to taste, really.

The first issue where the icons are positioned half out of view seems the same. You can still fix it by changing some related options, but the issue always returns eventually.

This next thing I'm not sure what to blame exactly... but it seems like when when my monitors sleep, Windows may lose connection to at least one which sort of forces a re-layout of desktop space. (just like unplugging them) When they're all back, Windows doesn't seem to see that space should be reserved for the DF taskbar on the non-primary monitor. If you maximize a window on the screen with the DF taskbar, part of the window is behind the taskbar. Restarting DF does not reserve the taskbar space... only restarting Windows will. Essentially, it would be nice if DisplayFusion could re-reserve the bottom of the desktop so that maximized windows do not overlap with the DF taskbar.

I tried creating new splits and removing them and it didn't seem to fix things in the past. I use Fancy Zones and killing that and restarting that didn't help anything inbetween. Nor did redefining the zones there. Creating manual margins in Display Fusion did odd things where it seemed like the margins were in the wrong place... but it's not great to use that a workaround even if it were to help... because a reboot will fix the original problem and not undo the workaround.

I found that if I wake up my screens in the right order with good enough timing, that I can avoid the issue. Or perhaps it is just random and that's what I think can affect it. In any case, I will see if I can break it on purpose next time and try your suggestion again.

Maybe I'll create a troubleshooting export before and after to see if the monitors are reported differently.

I tried again, but it seems the only thing to fix it is rebooting. I'm perplexed as to why that much is needed. I would think that just restarting DF would be enough.

Anyways, I've attached two more troubleshooting exports. The main difference I see between them is the reported "WorkArea". When things are not working, the WorkArea is the entire screen... when it is working properly, the WorkArea removes some of the height, reserved for the taskbar.

I'm on beta 9 now. Moving the taskbar around instead of using automatic doesn't reserve the workarea. If I restart Explorer, then restart DF... the area is reserved properly.

It says that 10.0b11 is the same as 9.9... so that's what I'm using.

It still seems to have the Shortcuts > Combine with Taskbar buttons issue where they get cut off at the top.

The log with the issue present is probably quite big as the trigger for this event is probably only once per day and I can do things in a certain order to prevent it.

I purposely did things in the wrong order today around the timestamp: 2021/12/24 14:11:29

To be clear, my computer is not fully asleep to cause this issue. It is only monitor standby.

My left "monitor" is actually a TV that doesn't respond to wake events on HDMI, but I have some software that can WOL it awake. It is considered the primary monitor by Windows configuration, but the PC always defaults my DisplayPort as primary.

My right monitor is set up in portrait mode which is its only oddity. Windows is configured to think this is the secondary monitor, however the PC considers it primary because DisplayPort takes precedence.

Pretty unrelated, but if my DP monitor is disconnected, my PC will consider my VR headset on DP to be primary instead of anything connected to HDMI. Windows doesn't make that mistake.

If I power on the left TV before waking Windows up, my workspace area remains normal. If for any reason, Windows wakes the monitors, but the TV is not turned on... that's when bad things happen. I believe this is because the TV after a certain amount of time will fully disconnect the HDMI input so that Windows no longer sees anything connected. When Windows wakes the screens and one screen is missing, things won't be normal.

Aside from not waking my displays in order, one additional trigger is that if Windows wants to display an important notification such as a meeting reminder... it will wake the screens for about 10 seconds to show that notification. It may, at this point, notice that the TV is gone. This will have the same effect as waking the screens out of order and cause the working area bug.

Again, restarting Explorer.exe then DF will resolve the issue. Rebooting obviously fixes it for the same reason.

One additional piece of information that I thought of is that the left screen with the real taskbar is set to auto-hide the taskbar. The DF taskbar is not set to auto-hide. Might this have anything to do with DF properly reserving workarea space?

The very first issue was resolved by DF10b12, where the icons get cut off. Additionally the larger than expected control center icons from the screenshot was also fixed.

The final issue that remains is the workarea not being reserved by the DF taskbar upon waking the monitors in the wrong order. It still happens with the same trigger and restarting Windows fixes it.

See attached.

I tried that when I first posted but that was a while ago. Unfortunately PowerToys/FanceZones running/not-running does not affect this issue. (I tried again)

Restarting the explorer process then restarting DF is the shortest fix after the issue appears.

I've attached more before/after logs.

So, beta 13 is different... I can see it trying to solve the issue... but it is unable to.

I woke my monitors in the wrong order on purpose to replicate the issue and found that DF would remove and re-add the taskbar every 15+3 seconds. The taskbar would be gone for 3 seconds and once back it would try again 15 seconds later. In some ways having the DF taskbar disappear every 18 seconds is worse than the previous problem.

If I restart Explorer, I do not need to restart DF anymore. The 18 second re-taskbar period will fix the reserved space during the next loop. I was pretty suspicious that this was at least in part Windows' fault. I sort of don't like restarting Explorer because some of my tasktray icons don't come back until I restart those programs.

I turned logging on L1 for a few minutes during the 18 second loops. Maybe it'll tell you something.

No, Start11 by Stardock and ExplorerPatcher.

I am having the same issue. I turned on Beta updates and the latest one caused exactly this. The bar would appear, then disappear every 10 to 15 seconds. And randomly, if I maximized a window it would still go behind the taskbar. After a reboot it seems fine so far, but I know something will cause it to fail again.

I read your other thread and it sounds like you haven't nailed down your trigger. For me, I know exactly what will cause it and I can avoid it for most of a week. It entirely has to do with my monitors going to sleep and one of them has a deep sleep where it disconnects from HDMI and confuses Windows for a bit. If I turn it back on first before taking Windows out of screen suspend, everything will stay fine.

I don't know of any other triggers for me that will cause the working area to be miscalculated.

Yeah, I have no idea. It isdoing it right now, and I just rebooted my machine. So annoying. It was working fine before I rebooted, but I needed to for another reason. I am including my debug info.

The closest analogy I can think of for true computer monitors to behave as my left screen does is to actually unplug the video cable during video suspend.

• Have two monitors hooked up with spanned desktop.
• Set "When plugged in, turn off my screen after" to 1 minute.
• Wait for screens to blank.
• Unplug the video cable of the screen with the primary taskbar(which is set to auto-hide)
• Wait a few seconds and plug the cable back in.
• The other screen might wake from suspend but remain blank.
• Use the mouse/KB to wake Windows. (for me, only 1 screen is detected and has switched from portrait to landscape)
• Power on the other screen to restore the spanned desktop

Uninstalled ExplorerPatcher and rebooted and it still happens.

I still have a suspicion that it requires the monitor that remains plugged in to be in portrait mode and the other monitor to be landscape. When in step 7 in my list, the previously portrait monitor is temporarily landscape.

Well, I'll try and be optimistic, but restarting Explorer actually fixes the issue for me, not triggers it~

(I know crashing/restarting was a trigger for someone else, so I hope their issue gets better.)

Mine is still the crashing and a restart that does it. Had a power outage yesterday, and when it came back on the Taskbar started doing it again. I had to do a clean shutdown and restart to fix it.

Just keeping this updated, my taskbar crashing/restarting over and over again did it again last night. We had a storm and the power went out, when the computer restarted the taskbar started the crashing thing again. This time I tried simply signing out and signing back in, that fixed it for that session. I did not need to do a full restart. Maybe there is something that happens during a clean shutdown that the startup needs to function?

It just happened again, but during a normal restart. I restarted explorer and tehn restarted display fusion and that worked for this session. If it does it again I will try again. Maybe I will write a script to do this so I don't have to go through all the manual steps.

Just installed it, lets see how it goes.

Sorry, it has been a minute, but just a heads up, this is still a thing.

After every restart I have to restart explorer manually. I have a chrome tab that I always use on my secondary monitor and I keep forgetting about this and the downloads are showing up behind the bar, so I can't see them. I keep thinking something is wrong because my downloads aren't showing up, then I remember.

I am still on Beta 16.

For my specific purposes, I don't encounter this issue as I described it. But I disabled desktop notifications of calendar events as it was the known trigger. I haven't looked back because the notification wasn't useful to me anyways.

None of the issues that I reported in my first two posts are a problem for me any longer with that one caveat of disabling the known cause.

Perhaps this thread should be discontinued since there are other threads that focus on other flavors of one of the issues. (I never encountered those alternate flavors, so I don't think this thread should be used for it)

Yes, but I did not need to turn off all notifications, just for Calendar. I'll re-enable those notifications and see if I can still recreate the issue this week.

So a calendar meeting notification can still cause an issue.

Essentially one of the monitors does not turn on when the notification appears and the other monitor temporarily becomes the primary. If it goes back to blank-out mode and some time later I wake everything up normally... the old primary monitor takes back its place but a few windows might get moved around and the workspace area for the DF taskbar isn't set right.

Restarting Explorer is usually necessary to fix the workspace issue so that DF can be reset and further modify the workspace area.