Remove 'show hide button' in Windows 7.

Hi MGF.

Is there a way to remove the 'show hide button' in Windows 7? I'd like a reg tweak method or an open-source program to achieve this, if possible.

Thanks.

 

Have a look at 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.
There is a check box Hide the "Show desktop" button that should do the trick.

 

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/remove-and-restore-show-desktop-button-with-showdesktop-remover

 

Ah yes, that's a very handy tool. Although I'm surprised there is no registry or other simple manual tweak to do this.

 

Glad you found it helpful

Unfortunately no way. If it was that easy I would have offered you a simple script

 

Windows has always had a taskbar button for quick access to the desktop. How would you get there otherwise with umpteen windows open? :confused

EDIT - ah! Windows D

 

Win key + d.

 

Yeah, I realised as soon as I had posted but I find the peek feature useful.

 

BTW, do you want to remove the Show desktop because it's annoying?
You can also disable it. Right-click the Show desktop bar and uncheck Peek at desktop.
See snapshots.

 

But the icon remains in both your images. :confused

 

Do you want those icons to be totally unseen or do you want them all directly on the taskbar? If you want them visible on the taskbar, you can drag them out of the Show Hidden Icons box to the taskbar.

Edit: Please clarify what you mean by "show hide button'? Do you mean the Show Hidden Icons button on the taskbar or the Peak button to the far right edge of the taskbar?

 

Hi usafveteran. I only want to get rid of the icon as shown in the image on my first post. 7+ Taskbar Tweaker achieved this (as seen in my 2nd post) -- but there should be an easier way (that is not installing something).

 

The bar is disabled. It will only show the desktop when clicked.

plodr posted a link to ShowDesktop Remover which doesn't install, and it doesn't need to be running. Click Hide Show Desktop on System Startup and forget about it.

 

I see, 'ShowDesktop Remover' sounds like the best solution so far.

Edit: 'ShowDesktop Remover' leaves a gap there while '7+ Taskbar Tweaker' actually removes the icon.

 

Maybe there would have been if more than one person was requesting it

 

Well -as I told you before- unfortunately it is more complicated.
I wrote a little C code that uses the Windows API to find that button and toggle its visibility

Code:

#include <windows.h>

int main(void)
{
  HWND hwndTaskBar = NULL, hwndSysTray = NULL, hwndShowDesktopBtn = NULL;

  if (!(hwndTaskBar = FindWindowExW(NULL, NULL, L"Shell_TrayWnd", NULL))
      || !(hwndSysTray = FindWindowExW(hwndTaskBar, NULL, L"TrayNotifyWnd", NULL))
      || !(hwndShowDesktopBtn = FindWindowExW(hwndSysTray, NULL, L"TrayShowDesktopButtonWClass", NULL)))
    return 1;

  if (!ShowWindow(hwndShowDesktopBtn, SW_HIDE))
    ShowWindow(hwndShowDesktopBtn, SW_SHOW);

  return 0;
}

It would be almost the same code if you want to remove the button entirely. But it will however leave the gap between clock and screen edge. To remove that little piece of free space you would need to enumerate the elements in the systray, measure them, add up their widths then move and resize the systray accordingly. As you can see it's quite difficult compared with a simple changing in the registry