Get Vista Taskbar Thumbnail Preview in Windows XP

It was only a matter of time before people started cloning Windows Vista features and adding them into Windows XP. One of my favorite Vista features is the thumbnails that popup when you mouse over the taskbar. And now I can use them in XP as well.

The utility we’ll use is called Visual Tooltip, which is a hybrid dock / thumbnail application. With a few tweaks to the settings, we can make it work just like Vista thumbnails.

Here’s what it looks like on my desktop… pretty sweet!

vista taskbar thumbnail preview

To make your thumbnails look the same as mine, just follow these couple of steps. Download and start the application, and open up the options from the tray icon.

Increase the size of the sliders to make the thumbnail bigger, and then uncheck the option for “Size proportional to the target window”.

vista thumbnail preview

Click on the Display tab, and then uncheck the “Show window title”

vista taskbar dock

That’s all there is to it.

Download Visual Tooltip 2.1

Via How-To-Geek

People who read this, also read...


  • Google Desktop 5 Speaks 29 Languages
  • Vista’s Sights and Sounds
  • How To Customize Windows Vista - Part 2
  • How To Customize Windows Vista - Part 1
  • Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) Coming in 2008
  • Joey, Mobile Web Service From Mozilla Opens
  • Vista upgrade workaround revealed
  • Windows Vista: 15 Reasons to Switch

  • One Response to “Get Vista Taskbar Thumbnail Preview in Windows XP”

    1. I downloaded it but on being run it reported some dll error and closed up.