How to Customize the System Tray in Windows 7
Posted on November 4, 2009 at 5:03 am
In Windows 7, the system tray is now called the Notification Area, which is just a fancy term for all those little icons at the bottom right of your taskbar. Just like you could customize the system tray in Windows XP, you can also customize the notification area in Windows 7.
There are two ways you can manage the notification area: either by dragging and dropping icons or by using the Control Panel settings.
What I like about Windows 7 is that it’s super easy to control which icons show in the notification area and which ones are hidden. By hidden, I mean that you have to first click on the small up arrow to see the hidden icons.
To show an icon in your system tray, click on the up arrow and then drag the icon you want into the notification area.
If you want to hide an icon, just drag the icon from the notification area and drop it anywhere off of the taskbar.
The second way to manage icons in the notification area is to click on the up arrow, then click on Customize. This will open the Notification Area Icons control panel item:
Here you can go through each icon and pick whether you want to see the icon and notifications, see only the notifications, or hide both the icon and any notifications that might come with it.
You can also click the Turn system icons on or off if you want to hide the Clock, Volume, or Network icons.
Finally, if you check the Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar, then nothing will ever be hidden and all icons will show no matter how wide they become.
If all your icons are messed up or too many things changed and you just want to go back to the defaults, click on the Restore default icon behaviors link.
That’s pretty much all the features of the notification area in Windows 7! If you have a question, post it in the comments! Enjoy!
» Filed Under Windows 7
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Love this tip about customizing the notification area. Greetings from Germany!
I hate those annoying messages that pop up in the notification area! I’m glad Windows 7 allows you to control the notifications and icons that appear in the taskbar. Thanks for the info.
I like the fact that the extra icons are now grouped into one icon in Windows 7. I used to hate the little expanding system tray in Windows XP.
I’m running Windows 7 in a VM on my Macbook Pro. It runs just fine was 4GB dedicated to its VM. I installed a little app that manages my Magellan GPS software updates. That app installs just fine, but I cannot access it once it loads. The support from Magellan says that I need to right click on the application from the Systems Tray, but it is not there. When I go modify the Notification Area Icons, I get a yellow Info box stating that “Some settings are managed by your system administrator.” with a link to “Why cant I change some settings?” The weird thing is that my account is equivalent to administrator and I am the only one who uses it. Do I have a virus/spyware issue, or is this part of the limitation of running under VMware Fusion 3?
I get the same message. I’m trying to figure it out and will post a fix if I find one.