Disable or Remove Extra Icons and Buttons from Windows 11 Taskbar

Windows 11 comes with many extra icons on the Taskbar such as Search, Task View, Widgets, Chat and Copilot AI. If you find these icons unnecessary, this article will help you in disabling and removing all these extra icons from Windows 11 Taskbar.

Windows 11 Taskbar contains following icons and buttons by default:

• Search icon (older versions) or Search box (newer versions such as 22H2)
• Copilot AI
• Task View
• Widgets (also known as Weather or News & Interest)
• Chat

These icons or buttons are enabled automatically when you install or upgrade to Windows 11 operating system. Some users may not like these extra icons as they occupy lots of space on the Taskbar and may want to get rid of these icons.

Fortunately, Microsoft allows users to easily delete or remove these unnecessary icons from the Taskbar. Users can remove these icons by turning off their options using Taskbar Settings page.

In this article, we’ll discuss the easy method as well as the expert method to hide or remove extra icons from Windows 11 Taskbar. The expert method utilizes Registry modification and should be used by advanced users.

Easy Method to Disable or Remove Extra Icons and Buttons from Windows 11 Taskbar

This is the easiest and quickest way to hide or remove extra icons and buttons from Windows 11 Taskbar.

1. Right-click on the empty area in Taskbar and select “Taskbar Settings” option. It’ll open Taskbar settings page.

Alternatively, you can open the same page using Settings app from Start Menu or by pressing WIN+I keys together and then go to “Personalization -> Taskbar” section.

2. On Taskbar settings page, you’ll see options to show or hide all items on Taskbar as shown in following screenshot:

To remove any icon or button from the Taskbar, set the toggle button given next to the icon name to OFF.

It’ll immediately remove the selected icon from Windows 11 Taskbar.

PS: In future, if you decide to restore or re-enable an icon on Windows 11 Taskbar, set its toggle button to ON again.

Expert Method to Remove Extra Icons and Buttons from Windows 11 Taskbar (Registry)

If you are an advanced user and want to remove these extra icons by modifying Windows Registry, following steps will assist you:

PS: The Registry tweaks for Windows 11 are very similar to the tweaks for Windows 10 shared by us in this article long time back in 2015.

1. Press WIN+R keys together to launch RUN dialog box. Now type regedit and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.

2. Now go to following key:

3. In right-side pane, scroll down and look for following DWORD values:

• ShowTaskViewButton
• TaskbarDa
• TaskbarMn

4. The values of these DWORDs decide whether to show or hide Task View, Widgets and Chat icons on the Taskbar. We can modify their values to remove these extra buttons.

• To hide or remove Task View button, set value of ShowTaskViewButton to 0
• To hide or remove Widgets button, set value of TaskbarDa to 0
• To hide or remove Chat button, set value of TaskbarMn to 0

5. To hide or remove Search box icon, go to following key:

6. In right-side pane, look for following DWORD value:

• SearchboxTaskbarMode

To hide or remove Search box button, set value of SearchboxTaskbarMode to 0

The effects are instant. As soon as you change DWORDs values, it’ll immediately hide or remove those icons from the Taskbar.

PS: In future, if you decide to restore an icon or button on the Taskbar, set the associated DWORD value to 1 again in Registry Editor.

Ready-Made Registry Script to Automatically Remove Extra Icons from Windows 11 Taskbar

If you don’t want to modify registry yourself, we have created ready-made Registry script files for you to apply the required Registry tweaks automatically.

Download following ZIP file, extract it using 7-Zip or other file archive utilities and run the extracted REG files:

The script file will ask for confirmation, accept it.

As soon as you’ll run the script file, it’ll immediately remove the extra icon or button from the Taskbar in your Windows 11 device.

PS: The ZIP file contains separate as well as a single Registry script to remove a single or all icons and buttons at once from Windows 11 Taskbar.

The ZIP file also contains UNDO files to restore Search, Task View, Widgets and Chat icons again on the Taskbar.

Also Check:

[Tip] Disable or Remove Weather Widget on Windows 11 Taskbar

How to Restore or Enable Classic Taskbar in Windows 11 (All Versions)

[Tip] Move Start Button, Start Menu and Taskbar to Left in Windows 11

[Tip] Customize Date and Time in Windows 11 Taskbar Clock, Add Day, Month Names