How to Quickly Hide Desktop Icons on Windows

Sometimes, the number of icons or shortcuts on the desktop can be overwhelmed. This not only looks messy but also makes certain apps harder to find.

One way to solve that is by carefully organizing icons based on their respective category. But if this still seems overwhelming to you, consider hiding all of the icons just to make the background picture clutter-free.

Here, you will learn how to hide desktop icons on Windows computers. It won’t delete them, so you can always resurface buried icons anytime you want to.

In this guide, I will show you how to hide (and show) desktop icons on Windows 10 but also work the same on Windows 8 and Windows 7.

1. Right-click on the desktop, and select View > Show desktop icons.

2. Now, desktop icons have been hidden.

3. To show them back, right-click on the desktop, and select View > Show desktop icons.

This simple practice could possibly improve the startup speed and responsiveness since there will be less information that needs to be loaded when the operating system is loaded. But perhaps it won’t be prevalent if you were using SSDs.