Taskbar Pinner

Taskbar Pinner is a tiny and portable Windows utility that, as the name hints at, can help you pin applications to the taskbar in Windows 7, just like in Windows 8. It also works for Windows 8 users who want to pin files and folders, in case the built-in function does not work anymore.

As there is no installation involved, you can put the executable file anywhere on the hard disk and just click it to run, as well as save it to a USB flash disk or other mass storage device, in order to run it on any machine effortlessly, provided that it has .NET Framework installed.

Worth taking into consideration is that it does not modify Windows registry settings or create extra files on the disk, leaving it clean after removal.

The main app window has a clean and intuitive structure, featuring standard and advanced options alike. All you have to do is point out a file or folder with the help of the file browser, or resort to the library to assign commonly used directories (e.g. Documents, Music, Videos).

As far as advanced options are concerned, it is possible to input command lines and a working directories, apply an icon to the taskbar icon, point out a hotkey for quickly launching the process, as well as make it run in normal window mode, minimized or maximized. Last but not least, you can specify a description for the respective file or folder.

Files and folders are immediately pinned to the taskbar once the command is triggered. There were no kind of unpleasant surprises throughout our tests, as Taskbar Pinner did not hang, crash or pop up error messages. Although it does not look glamorous, this tool gets the job done and reserves some handy advanced options to personalize the pinned items.