Hide icons windows 8 install#

Once you install it, an icon will appear in the notification area. ClickyGoneĬlickyGone is another program that pretty much does the same thing, but with different options. There are no hotkeys set up initially, but you can quickly set them here by clicking in the box and then pressing the key combo you want.

So even if you leave your computer and someone tries to bring up the hidden program, they will have to type in a password in order to see it.

What’s also cool about the program is that you can set a password when showing a window, closing an application or when opening the preferences dialog for the program. You can change this to multiple combinations or hiding/showing all windows. If you click on Preferences, you’ll be able to set up the hotkeys and change what happens when you either single-click or double-click on the icon in the notification area.īy default, single clicks will hide/show the currently active window. Those are all pretty obvious as to what action they will perform. If you right-click on the icon, you’ll see a bunch of options like Hide All Windows, Show All Windows, Hidden Windows, etc. Clicking on the icon again will bring that application back. By default, clicking on the icon will hide the active window on your desktop. Once you install it on your system, a small blue icon will appear in your notification area. This will make it seem like the program wasn’t even running on your system. The best part is that it removes the program icon from the Windows taskbar in addition to hiding it from your desktop. Windows Hide Tool is probably my favorite little program for hiding Windows programs because it’s easy to use and works very effectively. There are some really good freeware utilities that will let you hide individual applications or all applications using hotkeys or mouse clicks. Third Party UtilitiesĪll of the methods above require keyboard interaction, which is ok for laptop users, but may be slower for desktop users who have their hands on a mouse most of the time. There is a bit of a learning curve to using AutoHotKey, but it is quite powerful even if you use only a small fraction of its features. If that’s not fast enough for you or your hands tend to be on the keyboard more than the mouse, then you can also use a program called AutoHotKey to assign a hotkey to run the. SCR file by right clicking on it, going to Send To and choosing Desktop (create shortcut). Just double-click on the shortcut and your screensaver starts up automatically, no need to wait for the idle time to kick in! Now all you have to do is create a shortcut to any of these files on your desktop or quick launch bar. Go ahead and perform a Windows search for *.scr and you should get a list of all the screensavers on your computer. All screensavers are stored in Windows using the. Screensaver ShortcutĪnother nifty way to hide your desktop is to start up the screen saver. Windows Key + D also works just fine on Windows 7 and Windows 8 without having to enable the Show Desktop icon. I also tested adding the quick launch toolbar to Windows 8 and enabling the Show Desktop icon there too. If you really liked that feature, you can enable the Show Desktop icon in Windows 7 too. This key combo is very similar to the Show Desktop button that used to be on the taskbar in Windows XP. Of course, you have to have a Microsoft keyboard that has the actual Windows key on it. This will minimize everything that is open on the desktop. No matter how many programs or windows you have open on your desktop, you can minimize all of them by pressing Windows Key + D. If you don’t want to have to enter your password again, you can try a different keyboard shortcut. This is a much faster method to lock your PC than pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and then pressing Enter. If you have a keyboard that has the Windows key on it, you can also press Windows Key + L. The only downsides are it’s not very subtle and you have to press the same key combo plus your password to unlock the computer. This is the best method to hide everything on your desktop. Pressing Enter will automatically select Lock this computer. Pressing the three keys will bring up a dialog with a few options like Lock this computer, Switch user, Log off etc. By default the Lock Computer button is highlighted. My favorite method by far is to simply press CTRL + ALT + DEL and then press Enter.