I did everything you said to the letter, and unfortunately the issue still occurs. Some programs seem to only cause this behavior from one click to the next, but the one program that seems to always cause this is Chrome. 

I'd like to clarify that it does seem that the slot matters. It mainly happens to happen in the 2nd slot, though I have gotten it to happen once or twice in the first. In your testing you show the icon being far to the right, not in the 2nd or 1st slot, so I'd ask you try it again under more exact conditions.

I also determined more details while testing. If the secondary program that gets opened by the affected icon has more than one window open, instead of just bringing the window into focus and making that icon selected (aero glass) like in the OP, instead the window selection dropdown for that program will appear directly, in the wrong position of course.

Hmmm, sorry to nit pick, but what if you put the group of actual windows (and not the initial pin) in the second spot and click on that a few times? Not sure how you're pin ended up like that but I pinned chrome while it was open and my pin for it is the same as open windows. That is, clicking on my pin doesn't open the windows in a separate taskbar slot like yours.

IIRC you're also using the Enhanced Taskbar. What about autohide? Just trying to think of any differences since at least my GIFs show I'm not making this up lol...

I will try a Clean Boot soon when I get a chance.

However, I thought I'd try a Windows Sandbox first since it was more convenient, and in theory should be the most clean setup possible.

All I did in this sandbox after starting it was install Chrome. FireFox, and Start11, and then configure Start11 to have the enhanced taskbar on top with auto-hide, always combine icons, etc.

Apologies, since the sandbox seemed to screw with the recording framerate, which makes telling when a click happened difficult, but the following video shows:

1. All icons other than Chrome behaving normally (though I have seen others take on this bug on my host system)
2. Clicking Chrome while it's in the first slot unhides the icon two to the right (Edge), which was minimized!
3. Clicking Chrome while it's in the second slot does the same to Firefox! 
4. Sometimes (left) clicking on Chrome shows its right-click context menu! This doesn't even happen on my host system
5. Clicking on the Chrome icon after those two other Windows were unhidden, will still elect whichever is two to the right of Chrome, similar to the bug on my host

I assure you the Sandbox was not "lagging" like that and it's only the recording. While still not perfectly isolated (e.g. the hardware is still unique to my machine), I'd assume that fact I can trigger this bug (set of bugs?) in a Windows Sandbox should at least prove it's not unique to my system configuration or some other application I have installed.

No?

-If your taskbar is at the bottom, can you reproduce this?

-If you have the 'Enhanced Taskbar' on or off, does it change the behavior either way?

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

Hi oblivioncth,

Following your steps with the same applications in Start11 2.6 (Start11Config.exe version 2.6.0.2 to be exact) from Windows 25H2 (26200.7840), but I haven't been able to reproduce an issue. 

It's possible I'm missing something you're doing or observing.  For example, when you say a window "comes into focus" I want to make sure I can see that to make sure we're talking about the same thing.  This is difficult if I can only see your taskbar.

Beyond that, other specific conditions could be helpful.  This may include:

• How many windows of each application are open, and on which monitors
• What exactly is pinned to the taskbar
• Whether or not these windows are maximized/minimized/closed, etc

Another thing that would be quite helpful:

"Reset settings" from Start11's settings backup tab, then only change the 'Enhanced taskbar'.  See if you can reproduce this with just that change alone.  If the problem does not occur, as you make any more changes, test again. 

If you can isolate the specific settings change that directly results in the behavior you are seeing, let us know and feel free to send me that backup file.  If we could get a bigger picture (whole screen if possible) of this reproducing on sandbox, this will especially be useful to help us try again to reproduce with your exact reproduction steps.

Thanks and best regards,

Adam McGuinness
Stardock Support Specialist

Edited my comment above with an additional suggestion.  Thanks again.

I have the same issue. When there are apps that have multiple windows open a click on that icon becomes a click on somewhere to the right. If I click on the Explorer Icon here it will open After Effects of Total Commander instead. 

It seems like the same issue as in the OP. At least I'm not alone haha.

Im back where my Win 11 machine is so I'll make the demonstration video soon.

It will be addressed in the next update.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager