Windows 11 · Taskbar

The taskbar disappeared in Windows 11

All of a sudden there's no taskbar on screen, but Alt+Tab still works. It's almost always the process that draws the bar, not all of Windows.

The most common cause: Explorer crashed

The taskbar, the Start menu and the desktop icons are all drawn by the same process, Windows Explorer. When it hangs or closes by accident, the taskbar disappears, but the rest of Windows (your open windows, Alt+Tab) keeps working.

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager (it works even without a taskbar).
2. Under the Processes tab, find Windows Explorer.
3. Right-click it and choose Restart.

If Windows Explorer isn't even in the list

Go to File › Run new task, type explorer.exe and confirm. That starts the process fresh, without closing your other programs.

Other causes

• A full-screen app (a game, a presentation, a video) covers the taskbar by default. Alt+Tab or the Windows key exits full screen.
• A second monitor: if the taskbar only vanished on one screen, check showing the taskbar on every monitor.
• After a Windows update: a well-known command reinstalls the system apps without deleting anything. In PowerShell (as administrator): Get-AppxPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register "$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml"}.

If none of that works

Check for a pending Windows update, run sfc /scannow in an administrator Command Prompt, and as a last resort restart the PC.

If only the Windows taskbar vanished and Doca's dock is still there, that tells you the problem is Explorer's, not the whole PC's: Doca is a separate process from it.