Simply use Stardock Start11. I learned about this right here at Avsim when Windows 7 came along. It was called Start7 back then.

There a zillion modifications to the taskbar. I use bottom location, medium size icons, autohide, and 50% transparency. You could choose 0 to 100 % transparency. The modified autohide makes the entire taskbar go away when your mouse is not on the taskbar. Nothing about a taskbar is seen at all. It will not interfere with what you see when using MSFS. (use the "let Start control autohide" setting instead of "let windows control autohide"). You will see the entire MSFS display at the bottom of the monitor screen, no space taken by a strip for the taskbar.

There are dozens of other settings. Control what right clicking on taskbar does. Where the start button is located on the TB. Taskbar size. Which monitor(s) TB appears on. Whether all your TB settings apply to fullscreen apps, windows apps, or both.

So much for the taskbar.

Start11 also modifies Start Menu, Start button, Search, Control (what the windows button does etc).

A bargain at $10, I believe.

So, thanks to all in the thread many years ago about Start7. That's when I bought it.

https://www.stardock.com/

 

By the way there is 2 ways to setup a bottom taskbar with Start11 to disappear. In both cases you must be using Start11.

1) Set transparency to 0 and let Windows do the autohide. The icons will hide but the bar will not hide (but it will be entirely transparent). I don't like this method because it's hard to identify the icons on a transparent taskbar. (But you are still using Start11 with this method).

2) Set transparency to say 100 or 50 and set the settings to let Start11 do the autohide. Now the icons show up clearly on the solid taskbar. But the whole taskbar itself and also the icons will now autohide. This setting, let Start11 do the autohide, is deep inside the Start11 menu.

In both methods (both require Start11), the taskbar will not interfere whatsoever with MSFS.

Not sure I read your statement correct. But, with Win 11 you can both auto-hide and place the bar at the bottom of the screen--nothing required other than doing it.

7 hours ago, RichieFly said:

Not sure I read your statement correct. But, with Win 11 you can both auto-hide and place the bar at the bottom of the screen--nothing required other than doing it.

100% correct.

In fact, I'm not using my task bar at all.

I'm using something called Quick Access Popup that displays my user defined list of files, folders, etc whenever I press the middle button of my mouse. It saves me a lot of time especially when I want to access folders that I often use.

& it's free & gets regular updates.

I use free Explorer Patcher, moved taskbar to left side of my 2nd monitor and changed to win10 style start menu. there are also tones of more features. not sure if it's enough for your application, but certainly more than enough for me.