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I upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11 a few months ago, and ever since I've been having a problem where the icons disappear from the taskbar. It happens while I'm using the laptop as well as when it comes out of hibernation.
I know this can be fixed temporarily by restarting Windows Explorer in the task manager, but this is happening several times a day and it's getting annoying. Is there a permenant fix yet?
I'm using Windows 11 Home version 21H2 build 22000.856 on a HP laptop with an Intel i5 1035G1 processor and 8GB of RAM. The problem didn't exist when I was running Windows 10.
Thanks.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
I have experienced this issue for quite some time - icons randomly disappear, and they don't reappear until I left-click on the icon in the taskbar. This was an issue in Windows 10 and has persisted into Windows 11. In the first screenshot, I am hovering my cursor over the Discord app, which is pinned in my taskbar. When I click on it, the logo reappears. You can see this in the second screenshot.
This just doesnt work for me, at all! One of the strange things about this bug is that different solutions work for some people, and not others. I've tried them all, and the only "non-nuclear" route that works for me is restarting explorer.
... but the other strange thing is that the bug has been there for a long time, and is affecting a lot of people - but Microsoft dont seem able to fix it.
Sadly, even your idea of pinning to the task bar doesn't work for me. All my icons s are pinned.... but when ever the system comes back from Sleep it seems pretty random whether all, some or none of the icons are there!
Pinning icons to taskbar (or unpinning them and then repinning them) does not always help either.
For example, on my systems (a desktop and a laptop) the entire taskbar becomes invisible when the system goes into Sleep Mode and then awakens from Sleep.
I then need to right-click the Desktop, select Display Settings, select Advanced Display, change the refresh rate and revert it. Then the taskbar reappears, with all icons visible.
I agree with the advice to avoid the "deep engineering" fixes that sometime appear. The only reliable method (without a re-boot) seems to be to restart Explorer in Task Manager. Annoying, irritating and irksome - and its been going on for Sooooo... long now.
