RetroBar – A Taskbar From the Past

Desktop Enhancements
September 21, 2021
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The program that we will present to you today is not very useful and we do not believe that many will want to use it, at least not for a long time. It’s not even that unique, because there are much better programs of this kind. However, it is free and can make you nostalgic. In addition, we believe that it will be interesting, at least to the older generation.

Introducing RetroBar, a free program for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10, that allows us to change the look of the taskbar to the one we had in the older versions of Windows.

How does RetroBar work?

RetroBar is a portable program, which means that there is no installation, all you need to do is download and run it. When you run it, the taskbar will immediately change to the look we had in Windows 95 and 98. In the settings, you can also choose the look to the one we had in Windows Me and XP. It is important to mention that only the taskbar will be changed, while the appearance of the Start menu will remain the same.

Unfortunately, with the change of appearance, we lose certain functionalities that we have in the modern taskbar. This means that you will not be able to reorder opened tabs, when you hover the mouse over the tab, an image showing what is in that tab will not appear, the notification field we have in Windows 10 will disappear, and right-clicking on the taskbar will display only three options. Option to turn off the program, program settings, and Task Manager startup option.

Among the settings, we have only a few options. Option to run the program together with Windows, option to select the version of Windows for which the taskbar will be displayed, font smoothing, whether the icons in the System Tray (lower right corner of the screen, next to the clock) will always be displayed, whether the clock will be displayed and the quick launch settings.

Conclusion

We liked RetroBar because it tickled our nostalgia, but we don’t believe that it will be very popular with users. If the change was only visual and all the functionality of a modern taskbar was available, we might recommend it. This way, we suggest you try it out, remind yourself of the old days and continue to use the taskbar you currently have on your Windows.

Platform:
Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 10