Windows 10 taskbar bug is reportedly slowing down some PCs

Windows 10 is unnecessarily slow to respond when you right-click on a running app in the taskbar, an action which brings up a ‘jump-list’ of convenient interface shortcuts.

This is according to Google engineer Bruce Dawson, who observed that the Windows 10 taskbar has an apparent bug (or it’s simply poorly designed) so it takes around 200ms to 250ms (or close to a quarter of a second) to bring up that jump-list.

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Windows 10’s taskbar shows all programs which are running on the desktop (among other things), and if you right-click on any app to bring up that jump-list, it gives you access to, say, recently opened browser tabs with Google Chrome (or recent documents with Microsoft Word as another example). It also has other shortcuts like the ability to close the program.

This menu is there for added convenience, of course, but as Dawson points out, it’s not so convenient or streamlined if you have to wait a while for the options to appear.

Dawson observes that he reported a glitch whereby there was around a 500ms delay with the taskbar last year, and that this was fixed, but then adds: “However, closer analysis shows that there still remains a 200-250 ms delay from the moment that the mouse button is released until the menu appears.

“This is well beyond the ideal human interaction times and is a constant frustration. I don’t want to wait for my computer, especially when doing simple and repetitive actions that I know it should be able to do roughly ten times faster.”

Dawson says that he expects the “menu to appear visually instantaneously. Ideally in less than 50 ms. Certainly in less than 100 ms.”

Clocking off

He further notes that there is a delay when left-clicking on the clock on the taskbar, and in fact this is a slightly slower process still which can result in a 220ms to 290ms wait.

As Windows Latest, which spotted this issue, reports, a senior program manager at Microsoft, Rich Turner, has said that the software giant is currently investigating this report, and that the results of this investigation will be shared soon.

This certainly isn’t the biggest issue that Windows 10 has faced in recent times – far from it – but it’s certainly somewhat baffling as to why there might be a delay for these taskbar menus to appear following a click, even if it’s only a slight delay.

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