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First of all, this is not a duplicate of this question because that discussion took a detour. In there, the guy basically asked "how to get rid of the tray icon" and people answered "how to have the drives not appear within the list" instead, something much more complicated and beyond the point if you ask me.

Now, on Windows 10, maybe for the reasons covered in that question, the internal SATA hard drives are listed under that list when you click the aforementioned icon. But, as someone said there, no regular desktop-home-Windows-user would normally want to disconnect his hard drives on the fly. The icon and underlying list was useful when it served solely as a USB-drive stopper.

But a USB drive, on the rare occasions I plug one into my PC, can be ejected by going to File Explorer, then right-clicking the device, then 'eject'. The way I see it, the icon in the tray area is just taking space. And no, simply hiding it the conventional way is not good; I prefer to have all my resident apps shown; if I see the "show more arrow", I will always be uncomfortable wondering "what else is in here?"

So how do I get rid of that icon for good?

Giacomo1968
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Da Rossa
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  • If you have a USB mass storage device plugged in, the icon will appear, this behavior cannot be changed. The only possible hack I can think of would be to make Windows think that specific drive was not removable. You should come to accept just hiding the icon. – Ramhound Aug 30 '19 at 05:55
  • No, that's precisely the point, I don't have a USB mass storage device plugged in; I rarely plug one. The only devices currently in my system are my SSD and SATA hard drives. I would like the icon disappear forever. – Da Rossa Aug 30 '19 at 07:11

2 Answers2

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According to this site the easiest way to achieve this is by using a batch file:

  • Open Editor/Notepad and copy and paste the following code in it:

reg add “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\SysTray” /v “Services” /t reg_dword /d 29 /f

  • Save the file with any name you like and .bat in the end (NOT .txt or anything) in your preferred location

  • Create a shortcut for it and save it on the desktop (for now)

  • Open the Run box by hitting the WINKEY + R button combination

  • Type in shell:startup to configure your current User Account’s Startup programs or type in shell:common startup to configure the Startup programs for all the User Accounts on that computer

  • Move that Shortcut file we just created from desktop to that folder

  • Reboot your computer and check if that hides the icon

Maxir
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  • Before adding the shortcut to the startup folder, I tried executing the .bat from an elevated PowerShell prompt. After changing the curly quotes to straight quotes, I still get a "invalid syntax" error. – Da Rossa Aug 31 '19 at 06:49
  • Hm but it's working for me. What if you try it without _systray_ at the end? – Maxir Sep 01 '19 at 14:11
  • Yes I did! :( I don't know why it isn't working for me. What exactly did you do? Did you just execute the above line inside cmd or PowerShell, or did you go all the way to create the shortcut in the startup folder and rebooting? – Da Rossa Sep 03 '19 at 08:29
  • But did you get the "invalid syntax" error again? I tried it with the shortcut in the startup folder and that worked – Maxir Sep 05 '19 at 14:59
  • No, I did not get "invalid syntax" error again when trying to execute it directly into PowerShell. But I created a file named safely.bat and put this: `reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\SysTray" /v "Services" /t reg_dword /d 29 /f` and created a shortcut both on C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp and on C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup. Didn't work :( – Da Rossa Sep 08 '19 at 05:02
  • what do you think? :) @Maxir – Da Rossa Sep 09 '19 at 07:55
  • @DaRossa not quite sure what to propose ^^ What might help is to use a tool to achieve what you want. A quick research shows 3 candidates (which I haven't tested though): Winaero Tweaker, 7 Taskbar Tweaker and Ultimate Windows Tweaker for Windows 10 – Maxir Sep 13 '19 at 16:26
  • I use Winaero Tweaker, but, among the dozens of available options, I did not find anything close to the function to remove a specific tray icon. :( – Da Rossa Sep 16 '19 at 12:49
  • Hmm and what about the other two? – Maxir Sep 17 '19 at 20:12
  • Here I am, now I examined all the three tweaking apps. Take a look at their interfaces; none have anything pertaining to the subject matter function. Actually, on the 2nd image you'll see something close (red rectangle), but nothing specific. https://imgur.com/a/UmKpacP – Da Rossa Sep 21 '19 at 13:29
  • On the second image, there's "Remove Volume Icon From Notification Area", that should fix your issue I think? – Maxir Sep 22 '19 at 00:13
  • I tried on the hope that the app was miswritten, but it wasn't! The tweak really took out the VOLUME icon (means "sounds"), not the VOLUMES (plural), which is the mistake I think you made: the hardware pieces (drives) are indeed treated as "volumes" by Windows, but no: only the "little speaker" icon vanished, not the one representing the "USB drive". Edit: Look: https://imgur.com/a/iVjCqqg – Da Rossa Sep 23 '19 at 08:46
  • Hahah oh man that's unlucky! :D I really thought the drives icon was meant, because why would you want to remove the sound icon... Well I have nothing else to propose; maybe do a fresh Windows install? – Maxir Sep 24 '19 at 01:52
  • I'll do that as soon as I get a new SSD. Thanks for your efforts, Maxir! – Da Rossa Sep 24 '19 at 05:57
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Go to this URL and either download the software or just download the batch file. Place it on your desktop as a new shortcut, and when you see the windows safely remove hardware icon just click on the batch file and it will disappear. You will love it. You just have to run the batch file to remove it from the notification area: Hide or Remove “Safely Remove Hardware” Tray Icon

Also download the newest version of USBdiskejector.exe from download link below. It's a single file so you have to make a new shortcut to where ever you downloaded it to and place it on your desktop. Most importantly press the windows key and choose all programs and cursor down to the startup folder. Click open and slide your new desktop shortcut to the USB disk ejector shortcut into the startup folder so whenever you boot up the little white icon will show up in your notifications area. Right-click on the white balloon to choose options.

  1. Under General click on the "start the program minimized" and "show drives with partitions as one entry" and also "minimize to tray"
  2. Under ejection click on "minimize the program", "Do nothing", "Use audio notification if you want, and then check "Use balloon notification". May sound difficult but you will soon see that it is very easy and works every time. Left-click on the white balloon and it shows all drives attached and double click on the drive you want to eject and a quick message will come up and inform you that the drive has successfully ejected.(download the latest software).

It took me time to find these answers but it works perfectly. If you want to put the remove windows icon that you have made on the desktop to the taskbar. First hit windows key type cmd. Right-click on Command Prompt in the search result and then select “Pin to taskbar” from the menu. Now you have pinned the Command Prompt to the taskbar but clicking it will open Command Prompt without admin rights. You then choose the properties in the new command prompt taskbar icon and change the fields to point to the batch file and hit ok so that whenever you just click on the taskbar icon it will remove the windows safely remove hardware icon instantly. If you want to change the icon image to what you would like it to look like instead of the black command icon you can "in Properties" select change icon and when it says browse "in case you don't like the ones you see there are 4 icon .dlls to choose from in your %WinDir%/System32 directory. The names are:

  1. imageres.dll
  2. shell32.dll
  3. DDORes.dll
  4. moricons.dll (MS DOS Icons)

Follow all of these steps and you will be one of few people that can have what you want and asked for.

user1133550
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  • Please edit this to include basic grammatical structures, such as paragraphs and correct markdown _(see formatting bar at top of edit box)_; please also use spell-check. – JW0914 Jan 26 '20 at 13:32