Minecraft – I cant see the windows taskbar in Minecraft fullscreen

Minecraft has two modes, full screen and windowed. Pressing F11 toggles between these.

Full screen

Minecraft covers the whole screen. You cannot do anything on Windows (or the Mac desktop, if you have an Apple computer) and the task bar will be gone. If you want to use the task bar, you will have to exit full screen.

Windowed mode

Minecraft is running in a Window. You can resize the Window like any other. But first you will need to make the mouse appear. You can do that by pausing the game (Esc). Then you can drag the edges of the Window until it is as big as you want. If you are on Windows, you can even press a simple button to do that. It is the middle button in the top right of the screen. Keep in mind, this does not work on Mac.

I think the issue in this case is more a Windows issue rather than a Minecraft issue as @JeffyBoyy states.

You stated that it works fine normally which would imply 90% of the time it's fine. I suggest opening the task manager (Control + Shift + Escape) going to details if you can and find a process named explorer.exe.

Note: This process controls various things, so before you continue make sure you close out of important folders, file transfers and any important work is saved just to be safe.

Click on the process name and click on end task OR restart since Windows 10. The confirm that you want to do it.

Windows 10 note: You're likely done, but if your taskbar and other things don't come back keep reading.

After that you'll notice that the taskbar and a few other things will disappear this is intended. (Note: You probably will not be able to alt-tab, or other things to read this so read it and remember before you do this.)

After that click on the File menu under the Window title, You'll see a few options click Run new task. a window will appear and you should type explorer.exe and everything should return and the Taskbar should no longer be in the way (assuming this was the issue, which I've had many times).