Show / Hide Desktop Icons in Windows 7 with Shortcut Key
We know we can show and hide desktop icons easily by right-clicking on an empty area of the desktop and select “View” >> “Show desktop icons”, but if you do it often you will find that it is not quite efficient. If you’re looking for a faster way for this, you should try this tiny application. I successfully tested it on Windows 7 32-bit but it works also for Windows XP.
It’s called HideDesktopIcons, a portable free program with only 176KB in size. Extract the exe file from the archive package and put it somewhere, preferably taskbar so that you can show or hide desktop icons by clicking the icon button.
If you want to show or hide desktop icons with a shortcut key, you can assign a hotkey to the program through its properties window. If you pin this program to Start menu, you can access its properties by right-clicking the icon, but if you pin it to the taskbar you have to press and hold the Shift key while right-clicking on the icon.
In the properties window, find “Shortcut key” section. Enter a shortcut key of your choice and click OK. I used Ctrl + Alt + D for this.
HideDesktopIcons is surely a very helpful utility to have despite of its simplicity, but there is one annoying thing I discovered. It can’t work whenever I minimize all windows using the built-in hotkey, Win + D, or the “show desktop” button in Windows 7. I didn’t test it on Windows XP so I’m not sure if it has the same problem, too.
Note that if you can’t use the program at all, make sure that you already have Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable Package installed. If you don’t have it yet, you can download it from here (x86).
Visit How-To Geek blog to download HideDesktopIcons (scroll down for the download link)
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