GPO to always hide system tray icons in Windows 10

Question

I am working on some of my GPOs and have run into a problem. I am using Windows 10 and cannot get the system tray to hide icons. I've gone into the Select which icons appear on the taskbar and set to have most of them hide.

But it has made no difference.

I've gone into the registry and updated the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer EnableAutoTray value to be 1 (which should allow hiding) and even killed and restarted the explorer

Still, all the icons are always showing.

I've looked everywhere that I can think of for a GPO that would be controlling this, but there are no User Preferences settings. There is nothing configured in the Control Panel Settings. There is nothing configured in the User Configuration - Policies - Administrative Templates: Policy definitions - All Settings

Is there somewhere else that I should be looking?

Is there a GPO that I could configure to force the icons to hide?

Answer 1

You need to enable the "Hide the Notification Area" setting under:

User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Start Menu and Taskbar\Hide the Notification Area

From the GP Management console explanation for the setting:

This setting affects the notification area (previously called the "system tray") on the taskbar.

Description: The notification area is located at the far right end of the task bar and includes the icons for current notifications and the system clock.

If this setting is enabled, the user’s entire notification area, including the notification icons, is hidden. The taskbar displays only the Start button, taskbar buttons, custom toolbars (if any), and the system clock.

If this setting is disabled or is not configured, the notification area is shown in the user's taskbar.

Note: Enabling this setting overrides the "Turn off notification area cleanup" setting, because if the notification area is hidden, there is no need to clean up the icons.