How to disable / hide the taskbar permanently in Windows 7?
I would like to completely remove the Windows 7 taskbar, including the tray and start button, so that the user cannot reactivate it by pressing the Windows key on the keyboard. however, all other explorer functionality (i.e. launching an explorer window using Windows + E) should remain.
Can I permanently hide the taskbar? Perhaps some registry values can be changed to make this behavior possible with a powershell script?
Thank you so much
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Here is my solution (it hides rather than replaces or removes its own taskbar - this allows it to work with programs that depend on its own taskbar, such as the merge display taskbar).
Disable-taskbar, always on top
Still to be decided: [HALF RESOLVED]
- Get rid of the silly line that hides leaves automatically with some deployed apps like Google Chrome
HALF SOLUTION -
If you move the taskbar to the left or right before completing the above steps, you won't get a silly auto-hide bar at the top or bottom of Google Chrome. Since the native taskbar is no longer mouse sensitive, it won't affect hot corners or multiple monitors usage (for example, I have my own taskbar to the left of my middle monitor and it doesn't pop up when moving between monitors using the steps in this post) ...
Okay, I think I finally - finally - found a solution that:
- Keeps the native Windows 7/8 taskbar hidden from your session (you have a few steps you have to take at startup each time, or if you manually unhide the taskbar).
- Prevents the native Windows 7/8 taskbar from opening when pop-ups or programs require attention (blinking taskbar).
- Prevents the built-in taskbar from being mouse-sensitive (i.e., although it is automatically hidden, it will no longer appear when you hover the mouse over a hidden taskbar).
- Allows you to use the area of the screen that is occupied by the native taskbar (this is a problem not combining "Hide taskbar" with the auto-hide option; you cannot use this screen in real time).
- Allows you to launch alternative taskbars that depend on keeping your own taskbar working (for example, the Multi-Monitor taskbar Dislay Fusions + [Settings >> Advanced settings?> "Show on all monitors"])
One Time Steps:
1) Download and run this registry edit to prevent toast notification popup notifications in native taskbar / system tray: Notifications - Enable or disable popup messages - Windows 7 Help Forums (You can open this in notepad to see what changes will be contributed before installing this if you like).
2) Download and run Taskbar-Hide from here: Hide Taskbar: Hide Taskbar in Windows 8 | 7 using hotkey 3) Set taskbar to auto-hide
Optional:
3) B) Add a shortcut to Taskbar-Hide.exe in your startup folder so that it starts automatically with windows on startup (you still need to use the Ctrl + Esc hotkeys to activate the taskbar-hide functions - although you could also script if you're really interested).
Launch folder:
C: \ Users {Username} \ AppData \ Roaming \ Microsoft \ Windows \ Start Menu \ Programs \ Startup steps to hide the taskbar after each startup, or manually hide it with Taskbar-Hide
4) Make sure Taskbar-Hide is working.
5) Make sure that the taskbar is in the auto-hide state (i.e. you will need to view all programs that currently require attention).
6) Once the taskbar is "automatically hidden", press the hotkeys for Taskbar-Hide (Ctrl + Esc)
[This should mean that the native taskbar area is no longer sensitive to mouse actions]
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One way is to replace the shell of the conductor with your own shell. This is a common technique performed on Windows 7 Embedded.
On older versions of Windows (such as XP), it was possible to set a shell for each user via regedit. I'm not sure if this is easily possible on Windows 7.
See https://superuser.com/questions/352865/how-do-i-change-the-windows-shell-for-only-one-user
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I found another solution that is almost perfect for me, just hiding the taskbar and start button, just by sending a message WM_HIDE
:
Handle = FindWindow("Shell_TrayWnd", "");
...
ShowWindow(Handle, SW_SHOW);
The only problem with this solution is that the taskbar is not permanently hidden i.e. as soon as one item is activated that has no focus, which on the taskbar causes the item to flash yellow, the taskbar gets visible again.
I'm not sure if there is a way to prevent the visible flag of the windows taskbar from re-enabling or a method to bind to SW_SHOW
in C #.
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