You can either choose to keep them as big as they’ve always been or to make them smaller. If you like both and you want the density gains smaller icons give you, you can also choose a setting to make them smaller only if there are too many icons on your taskbar at a given time. Personally, I like how the Windows 11 taskbar looks right now, but it often gets cluttered and I find it to be visually unappealing, so I would be likely going with the latter option.

The main advantage you get from this, aside from any personal visual preferences you might have, is the fact that you can fit more items in your taskbar. This can be a combination of open tasks and windows, or you can also have a lot of pinned apps for easy reach. There was nothing technically stopping you from having tons of open tasks before, but it’s less likely to trigger your OCD now if you do find yourself doing a lot of stuff at the same time.

As we mentioned before, the Windows 11 taskbar is surprisingly inflexible as far as customization options go. You can’t, for one, make the taskbar vertical, and if you need anything other than the very basic customization options the OS gives you by default, you either need to do weird workarounds or use third-party apps such as Start11. This is in stark contrast to previous Windows versions—sure, they might not have had the most customizable UI ever, but basic features like tweaking the sizes of icons have always been there.

It’s good to see Microsoft slowly getting its act together in this regard, even if this is being sold more as a “convenience” feature than anything. Who knows—maybe we’ll have full functionality back by the time the next version of Windows is released. At the very least, I do want to see Microsoft give us the option to not only reduce the icons’ size, but reduce the thickness of the taskbar itself.