How to disable Pinning Items in Jump List for Taskbar items in Windows 11

In this article, you will learn how you can prevent Windows 11 from pinning things to the Jump List on the taskbar. Using this Jump List feature, you can always bring up anything that has been opened in a particular app, such as recently closed things, pinned items, links from web pages, and so on. We can right-click on any opened or pinned applications found on our taskbar that do support opening Jump Lists. Once you have pinned an item, it will show up at the top of your jump list. For disabling the pinning of items to jump lists, Windows 11 has two built-in options that a user can make use of.

As can be noticed from the screenshot above, once you disabled pinning things in Jump Lists, an option to Pin to this list is no longer shown anymore for any task. Neither pinned and not pinned items of jump list of a taskbar icon will give you a choice to pin the task. Jump Lists of apps in the Start menu are also updated in accordance. Also, it will grey out the option of Unpin from this list, which means you cannot remove anything from the Pinned items list either. Don't worry, you can make the changes back any time you want.

How to prevent Windows 11 Jump List from Pinning items to the Taskbar

There are two included methods to block the possibility of pinning items in Jump Lists for both the taskbar and the Start menu in Windows 11:

Using Group Policy Editor

By using the Registry Editor.

We can review both options.

1. Use of GPE

To block the pin or unpin things facility in Jump Lists with Group Policy do the following:

Now, launch the Group Policy Editor by searching for gpedit and pressing Enter.

Follow the path to the Start Menu and Taskbar folder through:

User Preferences > Administrative Templates > Start Bar and Menu.

Double-click the "Do not allow pinning items in Jump Lists" option to open its property box.

In the property box, click the Enabled radio button.

Then, click OK after clicking on the Apply button.

Right clicking an item in the Start menu, or on the taskbar will no longer provide options to pin or unpin recently used or pinned objects.

You again follow the steps described above to navigate the Do not allow pinning things in Jump Lists setting. The setting will enable you to pin items in Jump Lists to the Start menu and taskbar. Then select "Not Configured" in turn click the OK button.

2. Editing registry

***PLEASE NOTE THAT YOU SHOULD BACKUP THE WINDOWS REGISTRY BEFORE TRYING THIS PROCESS.*** The following steps, using the Registry Editor, will prevent pin and unpin options from being used on Jump Lists in the taskbar and Start menu:

Press the Enter key after you've typed regedit into the search box.

Once the Registry Editor opens, use the Explorer key. The path for that key is as follows: Click the Windows key, click New, then Key, if the Explorer key does not exist. Right-click the newly-created Registry key and give it the name Explorer.

Software policies for the active user are stored in the Windows Explorer key.

In the right side of the Explorer key, a new DWORD (32-bit) Value should be created and named NoPinningToDestinations.

To edit the NoPinningToDestinations setting, double-click on it. It will appear as a small box. In the text field Value data, place 1 inside it, then click OK.

You can enable and disable pinning and unpinning items to and from Jump Lists for Start menu and taskbar items by deleting the Explorer key or by adding 0 to the Value data text field of the NoPinningToDestinations DWORD (32-bit) Value.

Without further ado, with this guide, you should be able to disable the Jump List pinning feature for taskbar items in Windows 11. We wish you all the best of luck, until next time.