Skin behind taskbar

[Dex]

Hi there,

I've been running monstercat-visualizer 2.1.0 for quite a while now on Windows 11, and it's never given me any problems.

Funnily enough, recently it started to overlap my taskbar. Mind you, even without sound, a few pixels of the visualizer are always visible. Hence, I nudged it a bit under the taskbar. That way, it would only show when there was a sound playing:

17-05-2024_23-39-31.jpg

Now, it will overlap the taskbar unless I click on the taskbar:

17-05-2024_23-41-29.jpg

I've tried all kinds of different settings to force a different behavior, but I can't manage to get it back to how it used to work.

Does anybody have an idea what I could do to alleviate the situation? Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

[balala]

Does anybody have an idea what I could do to alleviate the situation?

Most probably you've set the position of the skin to topmost. Try right clicking the skin, go to Settings -> Position and set it to Normal in the submenu. Has this fixed the problem?

[Dex]

Hey balala, thanks for getting back to me.

Unfortunately, that is one of the many settings I already tried to change. It doesn't matter if I set it to Normal, Desktop, Background (which is the current setting) or anything else. It will still show above the taskbar unless I focus the taskbar by clicking on it.

[Yincognito]

Have you changed the taskbar settings? You know, auto hide, locking, that kind of stuff. Also, did your background noise increased lately?

[Dex]

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.

[Yincognito]

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:
- 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)
- 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)

[Dex]

Thanks for getting me up to speed on the nomenclature.

I also think they're related, but getting rid of the dimming by moving application windows away from the border still didn't influence the skin's behavior.

While I didn't have a particular reason to install Windows 11, there was also no particular reason to stay on Windows 10. To me, it's pretty much the same with a different skin. Anything after Windows 7 feels like a downgrade, anyways.

Also, thanks for the links. Due to Microsoft's aforementioned outstanding concern, I usually don't bother with any URL starting with answers.microsoft.com, since that platform contains anything but answers. I guess the main strategy is to simply bombard users with meaningless boilerplate posts until they quit nagging.

Since this only occurred recently after doing nothing with my computer than using it, I'm starting to think this may be related to a recent Windows update. I guess we all know that they exert the same outstanding care and concern with their updates as they do with their "customer service".

[balala]

Unfortunately, that is one of the many settings I already tried to change. It doesn't matter if I set it to Normal, Desktop, Background (which is the current setting) or anything else. It will still show above the taskbar unless I focus the taskbar by clicking on it.

Are you sure? Weird, but I have no more ideas. Unfortunately.

[Dex]

Hey, no worries. We all know that Windows is prone to freak accidents that will defy common logic.

Now, I'm fishing here, but would it be possible to fiddle around with the skin, so it doesn't show the bottoms of the bars that are there even though no sound is being played? That way, I could just position it smack on top of the taskbar and call it a day.

[Yincognito]

Now, I'm fishing here, but would it be possible to fiddle around with the skin, so it doesn't show the bottoms of the bars that are there even though no sound is being played? That way, I could just position it smack on top of the taskbar and call it a day.

Hence my earlier (and unanswered) question about the background noise. Last time I tried Monstercat, the height of the bars at "0" (which is not exactly 0) was less than in your screenshots (EDIT: my bad, it's about the same). Anyway, yeah, it should be possible.

EDIT2: Solutions (to be updated - done):
1) check Hide Skin When Media Player Is Not Running in Monstercat's Settings skin (this will do what you want, but only when you close the media player, not generally when no sound is being played)
2) edit ...\monstercat-visualizer\@Resources\variables.ini, change the value of the MinBarValue variable to 0.00, save the file and refresh the skin (this is the proper solution, will make the bar heights 0 when sound is not played)