It's not a bug. Currently, "The notification area" only refers to the notification area on the main monitor.

I can see that it makes sense to use the secondary clock, too, even though it's not strictly a "notification area".

I'll look at it at my spare time.

I could reproduce the issue. Unfortunately, the combining option implementation is rather complex, so there's no simple fix. I'll look at it one day, but it's not a priority.

I've checked it. What happens is that StartIsBack++ completely re-implements the function that is responsible for drawing the taskbar buttons, CTaskBtnGroup::Render. Therefore, the changes that the tweaker does don't apply.

7+ Taskbar Tweaker can't do much about it. A possible solution would be for StartIsBack++ to provide an option for the users to keep using the original rendering functions (and maybe limiting the functionality as a result).

Are you using an insider build? Note that insider Windows 10 builds are not supported by 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.

taskbar tweak set to show labels always

What do you mean by that? Did you set it to always show labels for explorer, in Taskbar Inspector?

In general, if you could provide screenshots, or even a video that demonstrates the issue, it will help.

I tried to reproduce it, but wasn't able to see the issue.

I launched the Ragdoll Masters game, marked it as a game according to this article, and launched it several times. My taskbar stayed narrow all way long.

Please provide the necessary steps to reproduce the problem.

7+ Taskbar Tweaker does not, and probably will never support third party taskbar implementations. See the discussion here:

http://rammichael.com/7-taskbar-tweaker/comment-page-14#comment-2835

Note that starting with Windows 8, there is native multi-taskbar support in Windows, which is supported by the tweaker.

Build 16251 is an insider build, and it's not supported. Also, I see that you're using v5.3.0.3, so you should have gotten a warning message about the incompatibility. Haven't you received one?

Looks like something that is tricky to solve. I'm afraid that I'm not going to look at it in the near future.

As a workaround, you can use a tool which is able to save and restore the desktop icons layout. There are several such tools around the internet. There are even command line tools that I found, just Google for "save desktop icon layout, command line".