In Windows, system tray is a term most people use to refer to the area at the bottom right corner that has the clock, system icons (volume, network, etc.), and all other background program icons. It usually looks messy because software makers love to show their program icons in the system tray (sometimes for no useful purpose). Fortunately, Windows by default hides these icons in an expandable pane of the system tray. That left only system icons visible. If you still see system icons are too much, you can hide them too. More to that, you’re even able to hide whatever icon you hate from the system tray.

How to hide/show system icons in system tray

Volume, Power, and Network icons by default aren’t hidden in the system tray. In Windows 10, you get a new system icon for the Action Center (notifications center). To hide these icons, you need to do the followings.

• Open Settings by typing “notifications” into the search box on Taskbar then run the very first result.
• In Settings, you’ll see there’re many toggle to switch on and off apps notifications. Look closer at the top where a blue line reads “Turn system icons on or off.” Click it.

• In the next pane, you can toggle on or off these icons in system tray.

How to hide/show other icons in system tray

As I said above, developers love to make their program icons appear in system tray. You’ll end up with a cluster of these pretty fast if you don’t ever cleanup this place.

Here’s how you can choose which icons are allowed to show up in your system tray.

• Open Notifications & Actions settings by typing “notifications” into the search box on Taskbar then run the first result.
• In Settings, tap the blue line “Select which icons appear on the taskbar.”

• Then you’ll able to hide or show these icons. When doing this, you don’t actually remove icons from the system tray. You just hide them under the up arrow fly-out.