You can, but there is just one icon to represent the group of windows of that given app. It's visually hard to tell when there's more than one and impossible to tell how many (there is a little border suggesting there's more).
But it gets worse. If you have only 1 window with some app open (browser, terminal..), and this window has two tabs inside, clicking on the taskbar icon representing this window won't bring the window up. It will first bring up these small previews above the taskbar for every tab that you then have to click again (pick any) and then finally you get the window brought up. This is horrible because when you have tabs side by side in the window (terminal example), it doesn't matter which tab you choose as the same window pops up showing both tabs anyway. However you have to click twice (or hover for a bit to get the previews and then click again).
Congratulations to "Windows" version where switching "windows" is painful.
FWIW, I'm a Microsoft employee (not in Windows org) and I complain about "never combine" in any feedback forms we get. Maybe it will make a difference somewhere. (opinions are my own)
YIKES! This is literally the one and only setting I change right when I install Windows. I'm glad I found out it's totally unsupported before I went and took the plunge on 11. I guess I'll either skip 11 or wait for the update that fixes some of this jank.
The new design philosophy is ‘more familiar to on those unfamiliar with Windows’ I.e. Apple users. It also means they’re not interested in hearing how it used to work as you’re the exact opposite of who they’re trying to target.
This sounds similar to the behaviour of Internet Explorer on Windows 10 (which always felt weird). If you have two tabs open in IE, they appear as two separate windows when clicking the icon in the taskbar. Edge behaves as expected where two tabs -> one window -> one click but it seems like they just regressed as a whole for Windows 11.
> Previously you could choose to “never combine” apps so you had one-click access to each document. Now you are required to use two mouse actions to open each.
If you have "foo.txt" and "bar.txt" open in, say, notepad, you get one notepad icon on your taskbar that you click on once to open the list of windows and then once more to actually switch. Previously you could tell windows to never combine the taskbar icons so you'd have two separate icons you could change to in one click.
In windows 10, in a multimonitor setup with "never combined" enabled. If foo.txt is on the left monitor and bar.txt is on the right, the two icons in the taskbar almost always has opposite sort order compared to the the monitor layout.
Clicking the left icon bring up the document on the right monitor and clicking the icon to the right brings up the document on the left. You very often end up picking the wrong document and must do over. That pretty annoying.
