How do you shorten Windows 11 peek thumbnails that are in a group? \ VOGONS

How do you shorten Windows 11 peek thumbnails that are in a group?

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First post, by Miphee

Posted on 2026-09-24, 13:26

Miphee Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1100
Joined: 2019-08-05, 13:50
Location: Hungary, Central Europe

Hey guys, (not so) quick question:

My Windows 11 25H2 crapped out and I had to do a partial reinstall.
I managed to set almost everything back the way it was but not this one.
The problem is that I can't restore how my taskbar icons behave, namely the width of taskbar icons in a group.
This is what I mean:

The attachment scrwidth.png is no longer available

I opened a bunch of photos that are put in a nice group but the names are waaay too long and StartAllback, Winaero Tweaker, ExplorerPatcher, Windhawk or direct registry edit doesn't have any options or effect that works with 25H2, none that I could find anyway.
How do I make these damn lines shorter? It's maddening because even if only 1 opened image has a long file name it makes the entire group wide as fuck. To add insult to injury it also includes the name of the program used and I have no idea how to cut it all short.

The attachment kprk2.png is no longer available

Before the Windows 11 reinstall it worked fine but I can't do it anymore.

Any help would be appreciated, I'm out of ideas.

Reply 1 of 3, by Miphee

Posted on 2026-09-25, 12:50

Miphee Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1100
Joined: 2019-08-05, 13:50
Location: Hungary, Central Europe

Installed Windows 10 22H2 and lo and behold, Winaero doesn't work with that either. Installed some frankenstein Windows 10 21H2 that looks like Windows 7, no luck, list view is still wide as shit. Taskbar thumbnail width settings in Winaero have zero effect in both 10 & 11 no matter what version I use. These worked for me in Windows 11 22H2 and now it doesn't. The settings you see in the picture are exactly the same that I used successfully before and now it just doesn't work.

The attachment st.png is no longer available

When I have a ton of files open for work it literally covers third of my screen so I have to click on everything I want to view instead of having just a narrow file list that I used to have before. It was like this:

The attachment st2b.jpg is no longer available

And now it's like this:

The attachment st2.png is no longer available

Can't believe this thing can't be changed anymore.

Reply 2 of 3, by The Solutor

Posted on 2026-09-25, 14:41

The Solutor Online

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 250
Joined: 2026-09-09, 16:30

Why don't you just use the old profile instead of wasting time recreating a new one?

Reply 3 of 3, by Miphee

Posted on 2026-09-25, 17:30

Miphee Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1100
Joined: 2019-08-05, 13:50
Location: Hungary, Central Europe

Now I get what is happening, I combined Startallback with Winaero tweaker and got the functionality back.

The attachment Képernyőkép 2026-09-25 184618.png is no longer available

Turns out Winaero's left and right margin wasn't supposed to truncate the taskbar peak list window including the file names, it was only supposed to shrink/enlarge the empty space between the text and the edge of the text box. Startallback and Winaero glitched out together, resulting in this error message with Explorer when I shut down the PC:

The attachment nemne.jpg is no longer available

It messed up the Start menu as well so I installed Open-shell as well to make it somewhat usable. Now it's OK.

Never thought I'd be happy for a glitch. 😁

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