Add a sidebar to windows without extra software

Today’s post is another organization tip, this one for your desktop.  I have tired a lot of desktop management software / toolbars and I always have issues with the amount of resources that they use.  Many desktop customization apps have a sidebar or quickbar application launcher that lives on either the left or right side of your screen, which is really what I was looking for.  So today I will show you how to create this nativly in Windows.

1) Add a folder to c: called shortcuts
2) Right click on your taskbar and click on “Toolbars” –> “Add New Toolbars”
3) Browse to your shortcut folder on C and press ok.  This will create a shortcuts toolbar on your taskbar.
4) Drag the “shortcuts” toolbar off of the taskbar and drag it to the far side of your monitor.  This should automatically mount the toolbar.

This is the basic toolbar setup.  I tweaked it to my liking by adding auto-hide, always on top and large icons (these options are avaiable by right clicking on the toolbar and all the options are avaliable).  You can add as many shortcuts and folders as you would like to the toolbar by adding such contenc to the c:\shortcuts folder on your computer.