I was able to get only active apps to show on the taskbar for each monitor in a multi-monitor setup via this thread:
Show corresponding icons for each monitor on task bar
That works great, now I know which apps are active on each monitor cause the taskbar no longer shows all apps; just the ones active on the particular monitor.
However, this setting removes the pinned apps from the other monitors except for the main one.
My question is, is there anyway to show only active apps (by setting Show taskbar buttons on [Taskbar where window is open] in the Taskbar Settings) +pinned apps on all taskbar? On hindsight, pinned apps should appear on all taskbar anyway coz... they are afterall supposed to be "pinned".
Edit: Found an older thread ( Is it possible to pin an application to the taskbar on a secondary display? ) describing the exact same issue, but for Windows 8. 5 years down the road and it's till not a feature in Windows 10. Wow, how thick headed can the designers at Microsoft be?