There is something that has hardly changed in Windows for decades, and Windows 11 is no exception in this regard. I am talking, as you may have guessed, about the management of processes and how to end them when necessary. As a general rule, we can close applications using their controls for this purpose, and we can close windows with a simple click on their upper right corner, which is fast and convenient, which is why this model has been maintained for so long.
However, sometimes (sometimes less, sometimes more) an application or window becomes unresponsive, and as a result, it becomes impossible to close it in the normal way. That is the moment in which it is necessary to resort, of course, to the Task Manager or, for those who love the command line, use the Windows “kill”, that is, “taskkill”, together with the name of the application or the identifier of the process (in case you did not know, the command “tasklist ” of Windows offers a list of processes, each one with its ID, similar to what you get in Linux with “ps”).
The problem is that you may want to close only one of several windows with the same application, but fine-tuning the shot both with the Task Manager and with the tasklist + taskkill combo is the most complicated, in addition to forcing us to open the administrator or the console, something that can take its time if the process that we want to eliminate is affecting the overall performance of the system, something that unfortunately happens in a common way.
You will soon be able to quickly end an entire task/process by right clicking it on the taskbar and choosing a new ‘End task’ option, Task Manager style. New in build 25300 and hidden.
vivetool /enable /id:42592269 pic.twitter.com/mdw9XLeQln
— PhantomOcean3💙💛 (@PhantomOfEarth) February 15, 2023
In some contexts, this problem occurs in a practically testimonial way or even non-existent, but in others it is relatively or frequently having to resort to one of these solutions, but fortunately it seems that this is about to change. This is what can be deduced from the finding that PhantomOcean3 has shared through his Twitter account, in a message in which we can see an option, in the Windows 11 context menu, to end a process. More specifically, it is in the menu that is displayed when you right-click on the application icons that are displayed on the taskbar.
This new feature is in Windows 11 build 25300, released a few days ago to insiders, but At the moment it is hidden and does not appear mentioned in the list of what it includes. However, and as usual in these cases, we can unlock it (as long as we are within the insiders program and have that compilation, of course). For this purpose you will have to use ViVeTool (here we explain, step by step, how it works). When you have everything ready, use the following code:
vivetool /enable /id:42592269
In this way, you will be able to test the function to kill processes directly from the context menu of its icon on the Windows 11 taskbar. At the moment there is no information on when it will reach the final version of the operating system, but it does not fit I doubt that it is a small but formidable novelty that will be welcomed with open arms by many of its users.
