Creating Shortcut to Hide or Show the Desktop Icons
There is an option to hide or show desktop icons in Windows 7 or Windows Vista. But if you want a shortcut so that you can hide or disclose the icons by a single click,HideDesktopIcons.exe, a tiny application can do it for you.
The application was written by a programmer of Desktop Sidebar. Just download the application from here. Extract the zip file and store it any where at your computer. Then follow the steps below.
- Right-click on the application file and select ‘Create shortcut’. Do not choose the ‘Send to’ option as you are not going to create the shortcut at Desktop*.
- This will create the shortcut at the same location where the executive file resides. Right-click on that file and select ‘Pin to Taskbar’.
You are done! You can hide or disclose your desktop icons by clicking on the taskbar icon that you’ve created.
* If you create the shortcut at the desktop then you will be unable to locate the shortcut icon once clicking for hiding the desktop icon.
Assign a Hot key to Hide or Show the Desktop Icons
If you want to use a hot key instead of placing your mouse pointer to the desktop icon, here is what to do.
1. Create another shortcut from the original location of HideDesktopIcons.exe ( go to Send to > Desktop (Create shortcut) option)*. Now, right-click on that shortcut and select ‘Properties’.
In the ‘HideDesktopIcons.exe-shortcut properties’ dialog box, select the ‘Shortcut tab’ and put your preferred hot key combination at the ‘Shortcut key’ field. I use CTRL + ALT + C.
Click on ‘Apply’ then ‘OK’. After assigning the hot keys, you may need to log off or restart your system.
*Assigning the hot key for the shortcut that is pinned in the taskbar does not work for this trick.
Note: The original location of the application file is not opening at this time.
