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I am trying to know if there is a approach in python to read the tabs on the taskbar and get the list of them.

Suppose I have a task bar which has outlook,word,Skype minimized. I would like my code to get the list of things which are on taskbar.

Example: enter image description here

Here if you notice outlook,slack,chrome,skype and notepad is open. So what is the approach I need to follow to tell my code to return the list of open things on taskbar.

Chetan_Vasudevan
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    I think you may be looking for [`ITaskBarList`](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb774652(v=vs.85).aspx), which you can access via `win32com` from the [`pywin32`](https://github.com/mhammond/pywin32) library. – abarnert May 04 '18 at 18:22
  • [This](https://stackoverflow.com/q/2022219/1586200) question may help. – Autonomous May 04 '18 at 18:24
  • @abarnert, please can you explain your comment a little more in deep – Chetan_Vasudevan May 04 '18 at 18:40
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    If you don't know anything about using COM interfaces to do stuff in Windows, you need a tutorial before I can explain anything. And I have no idea where a good tutorial is—Microsoft has been downplaying COM in favor of writing your code in .NET instead of natively for a few zillion years at this point… But there are great examples that come with pywin32 (if you can navigate the fact that the website is currently split across github and sourceforge until they finish migrating everything…) that may be helpful. – abarnert May 04 '18 at 18:46
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    Meanwhile, once you wrap your head around pywin32 and COM automation (or whatever COM automation is called nowadays) and the general [shell](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb762597(v=vs.85).aspx) interfaces interface, you will probably still have specific questions about the taskbar APIs, and the MSDN docs will (a) only show you VB and C++ examples and (b) not have enough examples even in VB and C++, so you will probably have other questions. I think there are good tags for those questions here, but I don't know what they are, so that may take a bit of research too. – abarnert May 04 '18 at 18:50

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