Fix: Hide “Safely Remove USB” Icon from Windows 10
If you use a Windows 10 computer, you must have noticed the “Safely remove USB” icon that shows up in your computer’s system tray – it’s an icon that depicts the business end of a USB coupled with a small green and white check mark on its bottom right side. This icon shows up in a Windows 10 computer’s system tray whenever a USB device is plugged into it. The purpose of this icon is to allow users to sever the connection between their Windows 10 computer and the USB device that they have inserted in it in order to allow for all reading/writing between the computer and the device to come to an end before the user can safely remove the device without risking any of the data on it being lost or corrupted.
However, for most Windows 10 users, this little icon in their system tray is nothing but a nuisance. That is especially the case with Windows 10 users who use other third-party programs to safely eject USB devices connected to their computers. Thankfully for such Windows 10 users, there is a way that they can hide this icon from their Windows 10 system tray.
If you want to remove the “Safely remove USB” icon from your Windows 10 computer’s system tray, here’s how you can do so:
Open the Start Menu.
Search for “notepad”.
Click on the search result titled Notepad.
When a fresh new instance of Notepad opens up, type/paste the following lines of code into it:
reg add “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\SysTray” /v “Services” /t reg_dword /d 29 /f systray
Press Ctrl + S to save the new Notepad
Open the dropdown menu in front of Save as type: and click on All files to select it.
Set the new file’s name as anything you want, but make sure that it has a .bat extension, making it a Windows Batch file. For example, you can save the file as bat.
Move the new Windows Batch file to a safe location.
Once you have moved the file, right-click on it and click on Create shortcut.
Press Windows Logo key + R to open a Run
If you want to hide the USB icon for only your account, type shell:startup into the Run dialog and press Enter. If you want to hide the USB icon for all user accounts on your computer, type shell:common startup in the Run dialog and press Enter. Doing so will open the Startup folder for either your account or all of the accounts on your computer.
Select the shortcut for the Windows Batch file by clicking on it once and then press Ctrl + X to cut it from its current location.
Switch to the Startup folder you opened, right-click on an empty space in the Startup folder and click on Paste in the contextual menu or use CTRL + V.
Once the shortcut to the Windows Batch file has been moved to the Startup folder, restart your computer, and you will see that the “Safely remove USB” icon no longer shows up in your Windows 10 computer’s system tray when you insert a USB device into it.
