Fire up Windows 11, and you'll find the same taskbar everyone else gets, with only limited customization options. Fortunately, free tools can take it much further by adding new features and making it far more flexible. WindowSill does exactly that, bringing a modern toolbar packed with extensions, shortcuts, and other useful tools that significantly expand what the Windows 11 taskbar can do.
WindowSill: An Extra Toolbar for Windows 11
WindowSill is a free app that adds a slim horizontal toolbar just above the Windows 11 taskbar.
Instead of leaving that space unused, it turns it into a versatile productivity hub, bringing together features that would normally require separate apps or browser tabs. Everything from clipboard history, reminders, and media controls to unit conversion and drag-and-drop tools for image and video editing is just a click away.
You can download WindowSill for free from the Microsoft Store. Once it's installed, the toolbar automatically appears above the Windows 11 taskbar the first time you launch the app.
Key Features and Customization
Even with its default settings, WindowSill offers two genuinely useful features right out of the box: reminders and clipboard history.
Unlike standard desktop notifications that can be easy to miss, reminders appear as full-screen alerts, making them much harder to ignore. The built-in clipboard history also lets you quickly paste recently copied items directly from the toolbar with a single click.
What really sets WindowSill apart, though, is its context-aware toolbar. The available controls automatically change depending on what you're doing.
For example, when you're using a supported web browser, it displays quick zoom controls. If you're playing music or watching a video in Spotify or another compatible media app, media playback controls appear automatically.
And when you're on a call in Teams, Zoom, or Discord, the toolbar instantly adds handy controls such as muting your microphone or ending the call—without having to bring the app window to the foreground.
Unlike the standard Windows 11 taskbar, WindowSill gives you far more control over its appearance and behavior through an extensive set of customization options.
You can dock it to any edge of the screen, match its look to your desktop theme, adjust its size and transparency, and fine-tune plenty of other settings. These are exactly the kinds of customization options still missing from the default Windows 11 taskbar.
Extensions
WindowSill's biggest strength is its extension system. Open Manage Extensions to manage your installed extensions, or select Find More Extensions Online to browse a large collection of community-built add-ons.
You can also explore the full extension library on the official WindowSill extensions website at getwindowsill.app/extensions.
Once you find an extension you like, installing it only takes just a couple of clicks.
Each extension also includes its own settings, which you can access from the sidebar to customize its behavior and tailor it to your workflow.
We tested a wide range of the available extensions and picked the ten we found genuinely useful for everyday use.
Clipboard History
The built-in clipboard history becomes much more capable with this extension. It stores text, images, URLs, and files, lets you pin frequently used items so they stay available even after a reboot, and automatically hides passwords from the history for added privacy.
Short Term Reminders
As we mentioned earlier, WindowSill's reminders go well beyond a simple timer. They display full-screen alerts that are hard to miss, let you create new reminders in seconds, and include a dedicated dashboard where you can view all your pending reminders at a glance.
Perf Counter
Perf Counter displays real-time CPU, GPU, and RAM usage, along with CPU and GPU temperatures, updating every second directly on the toolbar. You can also open Task Manager with a single click for a more detailed look at your system's performance.
It's one of those extensions you rarely think about—until your PC starts slowing down. When that happens, it's an easy way to spot what's causing the slowdown without interrupting your workflow.
Media Control
This extension works with a wide range of media apps, including Spotify, YouTube, Netflix, Apple Music, and Deezer. It puts playback controls and information about the currently playing track right on the toolbar, so you can control your media without switching away from what you're doing.
Unit & Currency Converter
Select text in a supported app, and WindowSill automatically detects values it can convert.
Whether it's a distance in miles, a temperature in Fahrenheit, or an amount in U.S. dollars, conversions happen instantly without opening a separate tool. Exchange rates are updated regularly, so you'll always get current values.
Image Helper & Video Helper
These are two separate extensions, but they work in much the same way. Simply drag and drop one or more files onto WindowSill, and you'll instantly get options to convert formats, resize files, or compress them.
Popular image formats such as PNG, JPG, and GIF are supported, along with video formats including MP4, AVI, and MOV. They're especially handy when you need to shrink a file before sharing it, without opening a full-featured editing app.
Fast, Simple, and Powerful: The Best File Converter for PDF, Media & More
URL Helper
Select any URL on a supported webpage, and this extension instantly gives you the option to shorten it or turn it into a QR code. It activates automatically whenever it detects a selected link, so there's no need to open another app or browser tab.
Web Browser
This extension adds quick controls for zooming in, zooming out, and resetting the zoom level in the most popular web browsers—all directly from the WindowSill toolbar.
It's a small addition, but a surprisingly useful one, especially during presentations or whenever you need to quickly adjust a webpage's zoom level.
Date
Date displays your upcoming meetings along with a live countdown until they begin, and lets you join Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, Webex, or Slack meetings with a single click.
It also adds world clocks to the toolbar and syncs with Outlook, Google Calendar, and iCloud via CalDAV, keeping your schedule and upcoming events in one convenient place.
Universal Commands
Universal Commands acts as a powerful launcher for Windows. With a simple keyboard shortcut, you can instantly search for apps, system settings, files, commands, and other actions without digging through multiple menus.
Think of it as a more capable version of Windows Search, combining fast search with the ability to launch apps and execute commands entirely from the keyboard.
AI Features
Everything we've covered so far—including reminders, clipboard management, media controls, file conversion tools, and extensions—is completely free and, according to the developers, will remain that way.
WindowSill's AI features, including text analysis, rewriting, translation in more than 35 languages, spelling and grammar checking, and custom prompts, are part of a separate premium subscription called WindowSill+.
If you don't need the AI tools, you can simply ignore them—or even hide them in the settings, just like any other extension you don't use.
Final Thoughts
WindowSill is one of those rare Windows utilities that feels like a natural extension of the operating system rather than a third-party add-on. If you've ever wished the Windows 11 taskbar could do more, this free tool is well worth trying—and with its growing collection of extensions, it has the potential to become an essential part of your daily workflow.
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