Taskbar customization features were plentiful in Windows 10. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the new Windows 11. There are little to no customization options for the taskbar in Windows 11, other than what icons can appear here and the alignment of icons.

If you have been missing the option to use small size icons in the Taskbar from Windows 10, unfortunately, Windows 11 has removed that option as well from the Taskbar.

Thankfully, there’s a hack that you can use to resize the Taskbar size to smaller than the default in Windows 11. This will be done via editing the registry keys on your system. And know that it may not turn out perfect given the fact that it’s only a workaround.

Note: Windows registry contains crucial files and values that are used to run Windows. Tampering with the registry values can cause serious damage to a computer to the point where a fresh installation of Windows 11 from a bootable ISO might be required.

We advise you to be extremely cautious while executing this method. Before you proceed, we recommend you create a backup of your files in an external hard drive or something similar. Aside from that, just make sure you properly follow the steps only mention in this guide and you will be fine.

Enable Small Taskbar in Windows 11 using Registry Editor

First, you have to open the Start menu by clicking on the ‘Windows’ button on the Taskbar or pressing the Windows key on your keyboard. After that, type ‘Registry Editor’ in the dialogue box.

Now, click on the Registry Editor app icon from the search results section to open it up.

On the Registry Editor window, navigate to the following path. 

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

You can do this by clicking on the drop-down icon beside each respective folder on the left side of the Registry Editor window.

Next, create a new DWORD value inside the ‘Advanced’ folder. To do so, right-click on the ‘Advanced’ folder, select ‘New’ from the context menu, and then select the ‘DWORD (32-Bit) Value’ option.

Name the file TaskbarSi, exactly how it is written here, without any spaces.

Next, double click on the newly created ‘TaskbarSi’ key and make sure the Base is set to ‘Hexadecimal’.

Now, in order to make the Taskbar small, change the Value data to 0 and then save your changes by clicking the ‘OK’ button.

Note: If you ever wish to turn the Taskbar size back to default size in Windows 11, change the value to 1. And to make the Taskbar size larger than default, change the value to 2.

After saving the changes in the Registry Editor, restart the Windows Explorer using the Task Manager.

Right-click on the Start button and select ‘Task Manager’ from the menu options.

On the Task Manager window, scroll down until you find ‘Windows Explorer’, then click on it to highlight it and press the ‘Restart’ button at the bottom right corner of the window.

It will refresh and update your Taskbar to a smaller size. As you can see in the screenshot below, the taskbar height and the icon sizes are smaller than the default sizes in Windows 11.

If you ever wish to restore the default Windows 11 Taskbar, you can do so by deleting the ‘TaskbarSi’ file that we created in the following directory in the Registry Editor.

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

Inside the above-mentioned directory, right-click on the ‘TaskbarSi’ file and select ‘Delete’ from the context menu.

Then, restart the Windows Explorer (or restart your PC) and everything will be back to normal.

Creating the ‘TaskbarSi’ registry key is a harmless workaround if you need a small Taskbar with smaller app icons on Windows 11. We hope this guide serves you well.