How To Securely Disable All Taskbar Settings

The Taskbar that's located at the bottom of your computer screen, allows you to perform a variety of tasks, such as placing It to the left, right or top of the screen, as well as using small Taskbar buttons and combining them when It becomes full. If you're sharing your PC with multiple users, they can do the very same and mess up your configuration. As such, In this tutorial, I will show you how to securely disable the Taskbar settings In Windows 10.


Before I make a start, here's what I'm referring to. Upon right-clicking on a blank area on the Taskbar and selecting Properties, you can configure and apply settings (according to your usability) as shown In the Image below.

Given you can customize It, so can any other user who has physical access to your computer. Well, that's until now! I will be demonstrating how to completely remove both the Taskbar and Toolbars tabs (as seen In the Image above), thereby only leave the Navigation tab available- which only has a single option pertaining to the Command Prompt and Windows PowerShell.

To achieve this, I will use the good old Group Policy Editor, that's only available In Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise and Education editions. If you're running either of these, then this tutorial Is for you. So without further delay, let's get this started.

Step One:

The first thing you need to do, Is access the Group Policy Editor. Open the Run menu, enter gpedit.msc and hit OK as shown below.

Step Two:

The Group Policy Editor will now open, so navigate to the following directory.

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar

Make sure the Start Menu and Taskbar folder Is selected and on the right pane, double-click Lock all taskbar settings.

Step Three:

Next, to the left of the window, select the Enabled radio button and then hit OK to finalize the process.

Step Four:

The Taskbar settings have now been disabled, so let's make sure the change has taken effect. Here's my settings before the above Implementation was applied. The Taskbar and Toolbars tabs are both active.

Last Step:

And this Is the result after enabling the setting via the Group Policy Editor. As you can see, the Taskbar and Toolbars tabs have been completely removed, thus only leaving the Navigation tab to work with. Perfect!

Final Thoughts:

Whilst this does not prevent users from accessing the Toolbars and Taskbar settings via other means within Windows, given this method Is a commonality with the majority of users, It certainly serves Its purpose very well Indeed.

If you wish to reverse the change and have the Taskbar functioning as per Its original state, refer to Step Three above, select the Not Configured radio button and hit OK.