The default location for the Taskbar in Windows is at the bottom of the screen. However, you don’t have to stay with the default if you don’t like it. Taskbar is made flexible and can be placed around any side of your screen, top, bottom, left or right. And here is how you can do it.
First of all, right-click the empty space on Taskbar and select Lock all taskbars if it’s checked, to unlock the Taskbar.
Then, once the Taskbar in unlock mode, you can left-click and hold an empty spot on Taskbar and drag it into one of the 4 side positions. The screenshot below shows that I have placed my Taskbar at the left side of my screen.
If you are using dual-monitor setup, you can even have one Taskbar pinned at the left and the other stay at the bottom, like below:
And if you have the Taskbar set in Auto-hide mode, you can still change the location of the Taskbar and keep it hidden in the new location. Speaking of Auto-hide the Taskbar, you can enable it by checking Auto-hide option in Taskbar and Start Menu properties.
Once all set, make sure right-click the Taskbar again and Lock the taskbar so you don’t accidentally move it again.
Note that, the same trick also works on Windows 8.1 as well.