My Googling hasn't helped with this issue.

But I did learn something else neat about the Taskbar - the Win key + (1-9) automatically launches or switches to the program PINNED to the Taskbar that is that many positions AWAY from left (eg, Win + 1 launches the program next to the Start button, and so on). So now I need to move my icons around to try to capitalise on that.

But that's not the issue:

In the last five days or so, I've noticed and occasional icon-sized space between icons on my Taskbar:

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Note:

Thunderbird is pinned, Adobe and MSPaint are not, so it's not an arbitrary gap between pinned and unpinned icons.

Anybody have any thoughts on this?Any choices listed if you right clik one of the gaps ??
ODDLY enough, no.

Not even the Taskbar context menu (Toolbars> | Cascade Windows, Show Windows Stacked, etc... | Start Task Manager...).

It's like it's a Windows Dead Zone.

(Mixing metaphors now, I know)Have you tried locking/unlocking and toggling taskbar buttons option?Taskbar has been locked since 2003, probably.

That said, I just toggled to see if that does anything.

Also tried reboot.

It's a sporadic issue, so I will pay closer attention to see what are potential triggers. Initially curious if OTHERS had seen/I was overlooking the obvious.I'm wondering if it's a program not closing properly, or something that enhances or otherwise changes the taskbar function. Do you have anything like that installed? If not, check your PROCESSES list, see if there's anything running that you've closed, perhaps it's just not giving up its taskbar space.
It's a strange one, for sure.Are you running any Themes ? ?