Dex wrote: ↑May 18th, 2024, 5:39 pm
Hi Yincognito, no—I haven't touched any relevant settings. Even transparency effects are turned off. Of course, I don't stare intensely at the taskbar, so I only noticed a few days ago that it actually dims when it doesn't have focus. That totally puzzled me, since I don't remember it being standard behavior.
At that point, I also noticed the issue with the Rainmeter plugin. Being in the background, I don't see it, unless the blank Desktop screen is visible at the plugin's position.
It's so odd altogether. The only discussion regarding a self-dimming taskbar I could find via Google was on
Reddit, but that didn't really lead anywhere, either. They do mention that it doesn't happen unless application windows touch the taskbar (which confuses me even more, who wouldn't use all the screen real estate they got?), but while moving any application borders away from the taskbar gets rid of the dimming, it still appears
behind the plugin unless it has focus.
You mean skin, not plugin. The skin is the visible "widget", a plugin is just a .dll file with no visual existence (and pretty much the only plugin used by the Monstercat skin is the Rainmeter included
AudioLevel one).
Yeah, what's clear is that the dim effect and the "set to back" taskbar are related issues, based on that Reddit thread. Which means that if you solve the dim issue, you might be able to solve the taskbar being behind the skin as well. By the way, "unless application windows touch the taskbar" is kind of normal, since this might be a weird "feature" (or feature gone wrong?) for maximized windows.
Fortunately for me and unfortunately for you, I don't use Win 11 and probably never will (obviously why, right?), but balala and some other users on the forum do, so if you're lucky they might have come across the same thing and hopefully found a solution.
Until such a reply is made, you can try googling for "windows 11 taskbar behind windows" and see if you find a solution. Some links:
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https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/taskbar-hiding-behind-programs/016ed89f-f320-4d53-914c-b27f6575278b (last reply from Feb 2024, but knowing MS and its outstanding concern for the user and bugs, doubt it's been fixed)
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https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/661639/how-do-i-make-the-windows-11-taskbar-always-on-top (this seems to have a solution, not sure if it suits your case, but it implies that other resident software could play a part in the problem, so you could try to temporarily disable some, do some restarts, or even try safe mode startup, and see if it gets you somewhere)