Pinning a group to the taskbar

Pin to taskbar saves the group, writes its shortcut and asks Windows to pin it — and Windows asks you before it does.

Select the group and choose Pin to taskbar. That saves the group, writes its shortcut, and asks Windows to pin it. Windows asks you to confirm — an application is not allowed to pin anything to your taskbar silently, and PerchBar has no way round that, nor should it. Accept the prompt and the group's button appears.

If you would rather do it by hand, or want the shortcut somewhere else as well, use Create shortcut…: PerchBar writes the shortcut and opens the folder holding it. That is also the way to put a group on the desktop or in the Start menu, neither of which the pinning prompt can reach — and the way through if Windows refuses the request, which it does when PerchBar cannot take the foreground to ask.

This used to say pinning was impossible for an application, and it was wrong. What is impossible is pinning without asking you. The one route Windows leaves open pins the asking application itself, and it identifies that application by the AppUserModelID on the process — so PerchBar asks while carrying the group's identity, which is what makes the thing being pinned the group rather than PerchBar.

That pinned shortcut is the group's button. Clicking it opens the group, and the windows of every member merge onto it.

Two shortcuts, both needed

PerchBar writes the shortcut you pin and a copy in your Start menu under PerchBar. Both matter. The first carries the group's identity, without which windows never merge. The second is how the shell resolves that identity to a name and an icon — without it the button borrows the first member's name.

Moving PerchBar.exe

A shortcut stores an absolute path, so moving or renaming PerchBar.exe would break every pinned group. PerchBar repairs this itself: at every start it finds the pinned copies by the group they point at and repoints them at wherever it is running from now. Pins are matched by group, never by file name, so a group renamed after it was pinned is still found.

If you have moved the executable and want the shortcuts rewritten without waiting for a restart, run PerchBar.exe --make-shortcuts.

Unpinning

Right-click the button and choose Unpin from taskbar, as with anything else. The group survives; only its button goes.