Microsoft’s PowerToys team is contemplating building a top menu bar for Windows 11, much like Linux, macOS, or older versions of Windows. The menu bar, or Command Palette Dock as Microsoft calls it, would be a new optional UI that provides quick access to tools, monitoring of system resources, and much more.
Microsoft has provided concept images of what it’s looking to build, and is soliciting feedback on whether Windows users would use a PowerToy like this. “The dock is designed to be highly configurable,” explains Niels Laute, a senior product manager at Microsoft. “It can be positioned on the top, left, right, or bottom edge of the screen, and extensions can be pinned to three distinct regions of the dock: start, center, and end.”
If Microsoft does go ahead and build this dock, it will also include customization options to change the background, styling, and overall theme. You’ll also be able to easily reorder extensions between the different dock regions and pin them freely.
This dock is designed to complement Microsoft’s existing work with its Command Palette launcher that the company launched last year. Command Palette is similar to Apple’s Spotlight in macOS, allowing you to quickly access commands, apps, and development tools.
Microsoft is currently soliciting feedback on this proposal, and developers can experiment with an early version of it by importing a project from Microsoft’s PowerToys GitHub repository into Visual Studio.