Why should I pin people to the Windows 10 taskbar?

It sounds brutal and potentially illegal, but you can now pin people to the Windows 10 taskbar. The question you might be asking yourself is: why?

To answer that question, we first need to explore what this new feature does.

How to pin people to the Windows 10 taskbar

If you’re running the latest update to Windows 10, you should see a little icon of two people next to the notifications area in the bottom right of your screen. Click on that, and after clicking through some tedious introductory blurb, you’ll be asked whether Windows can suck in your contacts from various apps: Skype, Mail etc.

Once that palaver is complete, when you click on the People icon, you should see a list of regular contacts that Windows suggests you pin to the taskbar.

In my case it’s done a fairly good job of identifying the folk I communicate with most regularly.

Once you’ve chosen someone to pin, a small icon containing their photo appears next to the People icon in the taskbar. The weathered-looking chap you can see pinned to my taskbar at the bottom of the screenshot is none other than BTQ co-editor, Tim Danton, for example.

Now he’s there, I can click on Tim and I’ll be presented with various bits of information, such as his full contact details, recent email conversations, a history of Skype calls and chats and so forth.

If I want to send him a quick email, I can quickly click on the email tab, press the + button at the foot of the window and bash out a quick message. Annoyingly, however, this has to be completed through the Windows Mail app, rather than Microsoft Outlook, which is my primary email application.

If Tim should contact me (he never rings, he never writes) then I’ll get a notification blang in Windows.

You can pin up to three people to your taskbar before they start getting buried in the People pop-up menu.

If you hate the idea of folk populating your taskbar altogether and just want to get shot of that annoying icon, right click in a blank space on the taskbar, select Taskbar settings and deselect the three People-related icons at the bottom of the screen.

Now read this: How do I get the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update?