How to Enable Drag and Drop in Windows 11 Taskbar

Windows 11 came with a lot of changes in GUI and user experience. While some great things were added to Windows 11, some of the Windows 10 features were left out. Like the drag and drop in the taskbar is not available in Windows 11. You can’t drag a file to a running program on the taskbar to open it in that program. However, you can use a temporary fix to enable the drag-and-drop feature in the Windows 11 taskbar until Microsoft officially adds this feature to Windows 11.

Dr. Mona Lisa on Github has developed a small utility that does the fix for you. The utility is named as Windows11DragAndDropToTaskbarFix. This small utility doesn’t require any installation, you can simply run it. After that, it keeps running in the background providing you with drag-and-drop functionality on Windows 11 taskbar.

SEE ALSO: How to Customize Taskbar and Start Menu in Windows 11?

Windows 11 Taskbar Drag and Drop Fix

So, in this tutorial, we will show you how to use the Windows11DragAndDropToTaskbarFix utility to enable the drag-and-drop feature in Windows 11 taskbar. Just follow these steps.

Step 1: Download and Run the Utility

First of all, go to this GitHub page and download the Windows11DragAndDropToTaskbarFix.exe utility. After downloading, right-click on the Windows11DragAndDropToTaskbarFix.exe and select Run as Administrator.

You may also see the UAC prompt, click Yes to continue. The “Windows11 Drag and Drop to Taskbar Fix” utility will start running in the background. You can also see the icon in the system tray.

INFO: If you get the “VCRUNTIME140_1.dll was not found” error, make sure to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 Redistributable x64. Alternatively, you can also download the static version Windows11DragAndDropToTaskbarFix_Static.exe from the same page.

Step 2: Use Drag and Drop on the Taskbar in Windows 11

After you have run the utility to enable the drag and drop in the Windows 11 taskbar, you can use it now. It means you can now drag a file to a running program’s icon on the taskbar and drop it in the program.

Let’s see how it works. So, we will drop a text file to Mozilla Firefox that is already running. First, drag the text file to the taskbar icon of the program and hold it for 2-3 seconds. You may see the “Not Allowed” icon on the taskbar, just ignore it. After 2-3 seconds, the running program window will pop to the front. Now, you can drop your file there.

Now, the selected file will open with the program you dropped it in. In our case, the text file opens in Mozilla Firefox.

SEE ALSO: How to Disable Taskbar Preview Thumbnails in Windows 11?

Step 3: Set the Utility to Run at Startup

Since we have not configured the “Windows 11 Taskbar Drag and Drop Fix” utility to start on Windows startup, the next time you restart your PC, you will not be able to use it.

So, to enable the drag and drop in the Windows 11 taskbar permanently, we need to start the utility on Windows 11’s startup. We can easily do that by copying the Windows11DragAndDropToTaskbarFix.exe to the startup folder.

To open the Startup folder, launch the RUN utility (press Windows + R keys), type shell:startup, and press Enter.

Now, copy the Windows11DragAndDropToTaskbarFix.exe file to the Startup folder, and you are done. You can now close the Startup folder.

SEE ALSO: Try the New Alt+Tab Switcher in Windows 11 (Insider Builds).

Enable Drag and Drop Feature in Windows 11 Taskbar

Thanks to the utility developed by Dr. Mona Lisa, you can easily enable the taskbar drag and drop feature in Windows 11. However, Microsoft is working on the feature and you may see it in the coming updates but there is no timeline available. So, you can enjoy this temporary fix for now.

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