How to Disable Thumbnail Previews on Windows 7 Taskbar in IE8

Published on 05 June 2010 by Nirmal in Internet Explorer

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Taskbar thumbnails is very useful feature in Windows 7 and most of the time should be helpful for you to see which windows are open and also quickly have a preview of the open windows. Internet Explorer 8 also supports taskbar thumbnails and it shows thumbnails for all the open tabs in Windows 7 taskbar. But in case you have lots of tabs open, this might become an annoying features as Windows 7 shows thumbnails for all the tabs.

taskbar thumbnails IE

Thumbnails for all tabs shown with IE8 icon on taskbar having more than one window.

You can easily disable taskbar thumbnails for individual tabs in IE8. To disable, open IE8 and select Tools-> Internet Options. Under the general tab, click on the settings button under the tabs sub group.

Settings

In the tabbed settings, uncheck the box “Show previews for individual tabs in taskbar”. This option requires you to restart IE8. Click OK and restart IE8.

Tabbed browsing settings

Once you have restarted IE8, you can see only one thumbnail preview even if you have opened more than one tabs in IE8.

Thumbnails in IE

Written By Nirmal

Nirmal is a Technology Blogger and a Microsoft MVP in Windows. Nirmal is also the editor-in-chief and owner of Life Rocks 2.0. He can be contacted at nirmal@nirmaltv.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @nirmaltv