Pin Stacks to the Windows 7 Taskbar

Pinning applications to your Windows 7 taskbar is great for making your most frequently used programs accessible and easy to launch. But what if you want to pin a folder containing applications, executables, or, heck, even files? By default, when you drag and drop a folder onto 7′s taskbar, it gets “pinned” to Windows Explorer. That means instead of taking up space as another icon on the taskbar, the folder is pined to the jumplist within the Windows Explorer folder icon that’s already present.

While I prefer it this way myself – I don’t need to clutter my bar with folders – others may feel differently. For you folks, there’s a new application called 7stacks that you’re definitely going to want to try out. Like OS X’s stacks, this program lets you can create a “stack” for any document’s folder and then click it to see the files contained within. Then, with just a click, you can launch any item in that folder. You can even browse through the subfolders in the pinned folder!

Even if you don’t feel the need for pinning folders to the taskbar in this way, 7stacks has another feature which you might find appealing. You can also use the app to combine a group of related icons into a single icon. For example, instead of having each program in Microsoft Office as its own icon on the taskbar, you could combine them all into one and then click the new icon to launch the program you need.

7stacks is a free program (donations accepted) and supports Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. You can download it from here.