Round is the new black! The Taskbar in Windows 11 is one of the new operating system’s most controversial features. It has been in the public spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
This most used feature of the operating system has faced backlash mostly for the lack of options but also, more recently, for new capabilities that Microsoft is busy adding to it, like the upcoming overflow controls and search widgets.
However, it looks like Microsoft is far from done tinkering with this key element of its latest OS.
It seems like the company is secretly working on a rounded Taskbar for Windows 11 and is well and truly on its way to testing this design change with a select group of users to gain feedback and insight into this revision.
This new rounded design allegedly appeared for a Reddit user on Windows 11 build 25174, which recently made its way to the Dev channel. The user says that the same thing happened to him while he was rocking the much earlier build, 25131.
But unlike last time, this time around, he managed to take video and photographic proof of it:
You can take a look at the video posted at the link above to see for yourself.
The Taskbar is floating a bit, too, if you look closely.
According to the original poster, the rounded Taskbar randomly appeared on his system, and the design change persisted even after display driver updates. It disappeared only when the user restarted explorer.exe via the Command Prompt.
Of course, not everyone is buying this UI change, with voices that this evidence might be doctored or done via third-party applications like RoundedTB that were then uninstalled.
However, the Redditor has denied this to be the case.
It may well be possible that Microsoft is playing around with this user interface change and testing out the idea of a rounded Taskbar to match the overall rounded design aesthetic of Windows 11. Only a handful of users might be in on this as the feature might not be ready for public consumption.
Until we hear more, take this with a generous helping of salt.
