Taskbar in Windows desktop holds all the useful shortcuts and the icons of all the open windows along with the special features such as the notification area and the Start Menu icon. But some programs are designed in such a way that the taskbar comes in the way when using those programs. Microsoft has added the feature that can be used auto-hide the taskbar unless you hover the mouse pointer over the taskbar area. But this is not really convenient as you have to open the settings to make the changes for making the taskbar hide automatically.
If you want to automatically hide the taskbar whenever you maximize a window, then you can use the open-source tool called SmartTaskbar. This tool does not hide the taskbar until you maximize a window. As soon any window is maximized, it will hide the taskbar leaving more space on the screen for the use of the maximized window.
It places an icon in the notification area of the Windows desktop from where you can right-click on it to see various options. You can double-click on this icon to manually set the taskbar in show or hide mode. You can choose the “Auto” mode that automatically detects when an application is in the maximized state and hides the taskbar. You can also fix the taskbar mode to hide or show manually which is same as using the Windows native settings for the taskbar but makes it much easier to control the taskbar mode as you can set these modes quickly from the notification area icon itself.
There is also an option called “Animation” that adds a neat animation effect when showing or hiding that taskbar. This effect should be avoided if you have a slower Windows PC and is impacting the performance of your system.
You can download SmartTaskbar from https://github.com/ChanpleCai/SmartTaskbar/releases