How to pin a folder to the taskbar in Windows 11?

Windows 11 offers an easy way to pin a folder to the taskbar. The process involves a couple of steps that would oversee creating a desktop shortcut and then pinning the folder to the taskbar.

The process that we will undertake to pin a folder to the taskbar in Windows 11 is mentioned in brief below:

• We will create a desktop shortcut for the folder that needs to be pinned to the taskbar
• From the desktop shortcut, we will use the properties to change the location of the shortcut to Windows explorer
• Eventually, we will use this desktop shortcut to pin the folder to the Windows 11 taskbar

We will look at the complete process and perform the steps in coordinated action to pin the folder to the Windows 11 taskbar. For this example, we will pin test_folder to the Windows 11 taskbar.

Reach for the folder location of the folder that needs to be pinned to the taskbar.

For our example, we will go to the folder location D:\test_folder\test1

Right-click on the folder (test1) to bring up the context menu. There needs to be an option in the context menu on Windows 11 to ‘Send to desktop’. This is equivalent to creating a shortcut for D:\test_folder\test1 on the desktop. The screenshot below shows the context menu and the ‘Send to desktop’ option within the context menu of a Windows 11 computer.

Once you click on ‘Desktop’, you will see a shortcut on the desktop. Right-click on this shortcut and choose properties as per the screenshot displayed below.

After clicking on properties, we will change the target location of the shortcut. We need to specify the Windows explorer location before the shortcut location as displayed hereunder.

For our desktop shortcut, we will change the target to ‘explorer D:\test_folder\test1’ (see the screenshot below). On a similar basis, if you are trying to pin a folder c:\test\, then the target for this would change to ‘explorer c:\test’.

Now, you can see the desktop shortcut for the folder. Right-click on the folder shortcut, and choose the option ‘Pin to taskbar’. This should pin the folder to the Windows 11 taskbar.

Upon clicking, ‘Pin to taskbar’, the folder gets pinned to the Windows 11 taskbar at the bottom of the screen.

Summary

In this Windows 11 tutorial, we have seen how we can pin a folder to the Windows 11 taskbar. The process is simple and quick. You need to understand that for pinning a folder, you will need to make a shortcut and change its target to Windows explorer. Upon completing these steps, you will get an option to ‘Pin to taskbar’ on the context menu.