Overview – System Tray Icons in Windows
The Notification Area (previously called System Tray) is located at the bottom right side of the screen for displaying recent notifications and icons for programs running in the background.
It seems that you don’t want to show all the apps minimized on the system tray, and, instead of showing them in the notifications area, you want to hide them.
By the end of this article, you’ll be able to show and hide notification area (system tray) icons in Windows 11:
1. Using Windows Settings
Step 1: Open the Windows Settings from the Start menu.
Step 2: Select the “Personalization” tab from the left sidebar and click the “Taskbar” option on the right pane.
Step 3: Expand the “Taskbar corner overflow” tab. Toggle on the icons that you want to hide from the system tray. To hide icons from appearing in the system tray, toggle off the icons.
2. Using Drag and Drop
Step: Drag the icon from the notification area on the taskbar, drop it in the overflow menu and the icon will be hidden from the system tray and moved to the overflow corner, like in the screenshot below.
3. Using Registry Editor
Step 1: In the Start menu, search for Registry Editor and run it or press the “Windows key + R” key combination to open Windows Run, type: regedit and hit the enter key.
Step 2: Navigate to the following path:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer, right-click and create a 32-bit DWORD value named NoTrayItemsDisplay.
Step 3: To hide the system tray icons, double-click the recently created DWORD value and set its value data from 0 to 1.
To show the system tray, set the value data from 1 to 0 or delete the NoTrayItemsDisplay value.
Step 4: Restart your computer to make changes take effect.
Suggested Article: Completely Backup and Restore Registry in Windows.
4. Using Control Panel
Step 1: Press the “Windows key + R” key combination to open Windows Run, type: explorer shell:::{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9} and hit the enter key.
Step 2: To show or hide system tray icons (depending on your requirements), set the icon behavior from the dropdown menu to
“Show Icon and notifications” option to display both the icon and its notifications while the app is running,
“Hide Icons and Notifications” option to hide both the icons and notifications even while the app is running, and,
“Only Show Notifications” option to hide the app icon, but keep displaying the notifications and press the “OK” button to save changes.
Next Steps
The system tray is designed to allow easy accessibility to your computer’s system settings, but it may grow crowded with app icons. Following the ways in this article, you may hide or unhide the system tray or reduce its size in a few simple steps.
Further, customize your device’s settings by following the related articles below.
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