This is my reality too and the taskbar takes some stuff down with it.

Also the taskbar is just broken in general. It'll pull tons of apps behind the '...' button even though there's plenty of room on the taskbar and it'll also put fake apps that aren't actually open on the taskbar.

Also no vertical task bar. Come on Microsoft.

If you're referring to the fact that new toolbar icons in Win11 are automatically hidden and that setting can't be changed for god knows what reason, I can recommend https://github.com/Aemony/NotifyIconPromote