With Windows 11, Microsoft has made significant changes to the taskbar and Start menu. Unfortunately, while doing so, both the Start menu and taskbar have lost many features and settings. One of them is the ability to resize the taskbar.

With default settings, as you have rightly noticed, the new taskbar in Windows 11 is a shade larger than Windows 10 taskbar. Of course, most users will ignore this small change, but some users prefer to have a small taskbar.

We could resize the taskbar in Windows 10 and earlier versions by unlocking the taskbar and dragging the taskbar’s top edge. That is not possible with Windows 11 taskbar as it does not provide an option to do so.

The Settings app also does not provide an option to change the default size of the taskbar. However, as always, the Windows Registry comes to the rescue. You can manually edit the Windows Registry to make the Windows 11 taskbar a shade larger or smaller than the default size.

That is, Windows 11 or Windows Registry offers three sizes for the taskbar: small, medium, and large. The catch is that, for our taste at least, the small size is too small, and the large size is too large. You can refer to the given pictures below to view the taskbar’s actual size when its size is set to small, medium, and large.

Needless to say, when you make the taskbar small, the taskbar icons also become small. On the other hand, when you make it large, Windows 11 automatically increases the size of icons of the taskbar.

Change the taskbar size in Windows 11

IMPORTANT: Although editing Windows Registry is safe, we recommend creating a restore point before proceeding further.

Step 1: Open the Windows Registry Editor by typing Windows Registry in the search and then hitting the Enter key.

Step 2: In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following key:

Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

Step 3: On the right side, perform a right-click on an empty spot, click New, and select DWORD 32-bit Value to create a new value. Name the new value as TaskbarSi.

Step 4: Finally, double-click on the TaskbarSi value and use the following values to make the Windows 11 taskbar small, medium or large.

Set the value data to “0” to make the taskbar small.

Set the value data to “1” to make the taskbar medium (default size of the taskbar).

Set the value data to “2” if you would like to make the taskbar large.

You may close the Registry Editor now.