How to hide Windows desktop screen

Posted on June 4, 2008 at 5:35 am

Need to hide your desktop or Windows screen while at the office? If you’re in an office setting, you’ve probably run into the situation where you were doing something confidential on your computer and someone walks into the office to ask you something, etc.

Maybe you’re looking at employee salaries or reading an email from the CEO, but whatever it is, you don’t want the person walking in to see it! So it’s good to know a few simple techniques that you can use to instantly hide your desktop screen from prying eyes.

Each method is pretty straight-forward, so you’ll have to play around to find the one that is easiest for you.

Hide Windows Screen/Desktop

Method 1: My favorite method by far is to simply press CTRL + ALT + DEL and then press Enter. By default the Lock Computer button is highlighted. That locks your Windows computer and hides everything on your desktop. Useful if you don’t want someone to see what programs you are running on your computer even if they are minimized.

The only downside to this method is that you have to press CTRL + ALT + DEL again and enter your password to log back on.

Image Source: UCLA

If you have a keyboard that has the Windows key on it, you can also press Windows + L. This is way faster than pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and then pressing Enter.

Method 2: If you don’t want to have to enter your password again, you can try a different keyboard shortcut. No matter how many programs or windows you have open on your desktop, you can minimize them all by pressing Windows + D.

This will minimize everything that is opened. Of course, you have to have a Microsoft keyboard that has the actual Windows key on it, which looks like this:

Image Source: itsnotthenetwork

Pressing this key combo is the same as clicking on the Show Desktop icon on your quick launch toolbar. So if you already have the mouse in hand, you can just click on that icon to hide your desktop screen.

Method 3: Another nifty way to hide your desktop is to start up the screen saver. All screen savers are stored in Windows using the .SCR file extension. Go ahead and perform a Windows search for *.scr and you should get a list of all the screen savers on your computer.

Now all you have to do is create a shortcut to any of these files on your desktop or quick launch bar. Just click on the shortcut and your screen savers starts up automatically, no need to wait for the idle time to kick in!

You can create a shortcut to the .SCR file by right-clicking on it, going to Send To and choosing Desktop (create shortcut).

Method 4: Use desktop hiding programs! There are many programs out there that let you hide windows and programs on your screen. One is Hide Window HotKey and Hide Windows 2.5. There may be better ones out there, but these two have good ratings and seem to have a good feature set.

And that’s it! If you have another method of hiding your Windows screen, please feel free to share it in the comments! Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: hide desktop, hide desktop items, hide windows, hide all windows, quick hide windows, auto hide windows, windows hid

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15 Responses to “How to hide Windows desktop screen”

Gopinath M said on : June 4th, 2008 at 9:50 am

Few more thoughts…

Method 1: This is the best method..its safe to lock your PC instead of just minimizing or hiding the windows.

Method 3: Assign a keyboard shortcut to launch the screen saver so that you can hide quickly.

New Method: Turn OFF the monitor in case Windows Operating System is not responsive

MJ said on : June 4th, 2008 at 9:58 am

This is a pretty useful post….it’s amazing how there are short cut keys for pretty much everything. If only we knew all of them over the top of our heads

Since we are talking about about short cuts, here is one that I use a lot at work, Alt+Tab to toggle among screens. In keeping with the theme of your post this could also be used to quickly switch to another screen if someone walks in

I’m sure I will be using Windows+D a lot from now onwards.

Thanks a ton.

akishore said on : June 4th, 2008 at 11:17 am

Gopinath - Good points! I agree that method one is the safest method to hide your desktop screen.

And I hadn’t thought about the keyboard shortcut for the screen saver! That would be even faster.

And certainly one cannot beat turning off the monitor! I wonder if there is a way to create a keyboard shortcut to turn off your monitor quickly????

MJ - Your welcome! Yes ALT + TAB is useful for switching applications, but it won’t hide your screen completely. Useful though if you just want to hide on application.

abhsihek said on : June 4th, 2008 at 2:23 pm

another cool shortcut for hiding everything, is to press window + l to quickly lock your desktop.

Gopinath M said on : June 4th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

Kishore I dont think it is possible to turn off through a command. I tried even programming to turn off monitor, never succeeded.

abhsihek said on : June 4th, 2008 at 2:29 pm

it is Window + L actually.

Madhur Kapoor said on : June 4th, 2008 at 2:57 pm

I prefer Windows + D

Syahid A. said on : June 4th, 2008 at 10:46 pm

Method 3 looks cool! Normally I will just press Ctrl + Alt + Del and lock my computer.

thomas said on : June 5th, 2008 at 12:59 am

ctrl alt del is a good reminder from this tip

andy said on : June 5th, 2008 at 6:26 am

bear in mind that pressing ctrl-alt-del will leave your screen as is behind the lock, so if you need to unlock it in the presence of the person you are hiding it from then all will be revealed when you enter the password.
The downside of all these results also makes it look like you are not working as nothing is active on your screen…

Steve Yu said on : June 5th, 2008 at 9:52 pm

I don’t know there are many methods to hide the windows especially method 3, so creative.

Nirmal said on : June 6th, 2008 at 1:21 am

Nice methods, I use Windows+ L and Windows+ D

Brian said on : July 5th, 2008 at 8:21 pm

ThinkGeek has a stealth switch that sits on the floor so they don’t see you do anything “suspicious” like hitting ctrl-alt-del, etc.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/compu.....ries/76ed/

Milan Chheda said on : July 16th, 2008 at 5:32 am

“winkey+L” is the fastest way to lock your PC…

Hide Windows Free said on : July 27th, 2008 at 4:50 pm

Hide Windows Free - Hide From Prying Eyes Quickly

This all in one boss key application can hide windows, mute sound, switch display mode, hide tray icons and more with a key or a mouse shortcut. Once the threat has passed it returns all to the state before hiding windows. There is also paid version that provides even more functionality in order to protect your privacy. A must have tool!