3 ways you can clean up your taskbar (System Tray) and improve performance
Posted by: Timothy Tibbetts on 08/21/2014 06:30 AM [ Comments ]
So I was tinkering with my System Tray recently and thought I would share with you some tips on the System Tray and how it can help you optimize your computer. The System Tray is where you see a row of icons in the lower right hand corner of your screen when you are at the Windows desktop.
The first thing you want to do is make sure some icons are not hidden. Usually you can tell if some icons are hidden because to the left of all of those icons there might be an arrow to expand all. To permanently expand them all, simply right click anywhere near the taskbar and select properties.
Under the Taskbar tab you will see a section called Notification area. Select Customize.
At the bottom of that screen make sure “Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar”.
By default the “always show” box is not checked meaning you can’t see any icons that have not been used recently. Out of sight, out of mind might sound good, but it’s the exact opposite here. You see, these are not simply just cute little icons. Every one of those icons is a program that is running on startup. These not only slow down your boot time, they rob you of memory by having all of these programs loaded up. That’s why this is so important.
If you see programs that you never use, didn’t know you had or want, then you have 3 choices here to slim down all of those icons (running programs).
1: If you don’t have a lot of icons then you can right click on any icon and then look for options, settings or maybe preferences. Look for the load at Windows option and uncheck it. Sometimes load at windows will be an immediate option. Bonus.
2: Remove numerous startup items yourself with CCleaner Standard. CCleaner has a decent startup manager. With it you can disable something in startup to be sure everything works properly and optionally delete it or delete it later.
3: Uninstall unwanted programs. Free up some hard drive space and get rid of some junk. Using a program like IOBit Uninstaller will allow you to uninstall in batch mode (remove numerous programs at the same time) as well as remove all traces that the Windows uninstall tools will miss.
When you are finished, you can also rearrange the icons by clicking on any icon while holding the left mouse button down and simply drag that icon in whatever order you like from left to right giving you quicker, easier access to frequently used programs.
Reboot and enjoy a clean taskbar and a better running computer.
Under the Taskbar tab you will see a section called Notification area. Select Customize.
At the bottom of that screen make sure “Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar”.
By default the “always show” box is not checked meaning you can’t see any icons that have not been used recently. Out of sight, out of mind might sound good, but it’s the exact opposite here. You see, these are not simply just cute little icons. Every one of those icons is a program that is running on startup. These not only slow down your boot time, they rob you of memory by having all of these programs loaded up. That’s why this is so important.
If you see programs that you never use, didn’t know you had or want, then you have 3 choices here to slim down all of those icons (running programs).
1: If you don’t have a lot of icons then you can right click on any icon and then look for options, settings or maybe preferences. Look for the load at Windows option and uncheck it. Sometimes load at windows will be an immediate option. Bonus.
2: Remove numerous startup items yourself with CCleaner Standard. CCleaner has a decent startup manager. With it you can disable something in startup to be sure everything works properly and optionally delete it or delete it later.
3: Uninstall unwanted programs. Free up some hard drive space and get rid of some junk. Using a program like IOBit Uninstaller will allow you to uninstall in batch mode (remove numerous programs at the same time) as well as remove all traces that the Windows uninstall tools will miss.
When you are finished, you can also rearrange the icons by clicking on any icon while holding the left mouse button down and simply drag that icon in whatever order you like from left to right giving you quicker, easier access to frequently used programs.
Reboot and enjoy a clean taskbar and a better running computer.
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