Center Your Taskbar Icons in Windows 7

This week we’ll help you achieve a special look and feel to your Windows 7 Desktops. Instead of having all of your icons situated on the left side of the taskbar…
…learn how to move them to the center of your lower screen.

I personally tried this out and love the look. In fact, I find it a tad more effective for switching between applications. The cool thing about this: it just required a couple of clicks and tweaks to fool Windows into thinking that there’s something between the Start Orb and the taskbar icons. And if you decide you don’t like it, you can easily revert the look back to normal in just seconds.

Curious? Here’s how to do it. Simply create a folder anywhere on your computer and name it anything you like. For example, let’s create the folder “Taskbar” under the “Documents” folder. Just make sure that it stays empty.

From there, right-click on your taskbar, select “Toolbars” and go to “New toolbar”. In the next window, select the folder you created—in our example, “Taskbar”—and hit “Select folder”. Your taskbar will look like the one seen below.

Right-click on the taskbar again to select “Lock the taskbar”. Next to your new toolbar entry, you should see a slightly transparent separator.

Very carefully perform the following steps. Click on this separator and hold down the left mouse button. Then, drag the cursor all of the way to the Start Orb and let the button go. The new fake “toolbar” takes the place of your regular taskbar icons. To center the icons on your taskbar, grab the other separators (those next to your icons) and position them as follows.

Great! The icons should now be in place. But how do you get rid of the fake “Taskbar” folder? Right-click on the taskbar and uncheck “Show title”. Also make sure to lock the taskbar again by clicking on “Lock the taskbar”.

And voilà! The taskbar is centered and, frankly, looks a whole lot better than before. Don’t you agree? Shoot us a comment and let us know if you like—or don’t like—the new look!