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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.
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The only upside to all this is that I'm not alone.
BUT I HAVE A NEW FIX!
OK, "fix" is a bit strong, but this is easier than restarting Windows Explorer. Win-D to show desktop and then bring it back. I triggers their little "bounce up" animation the way minimize / restore or change desktops does and this gets the blank ones to refresh.
I can reliably trigger the loss by switching desktops around I just went 6/6 on restoring the lost ones by Win-D.
Sadly, it only works for apps that were not minimized when invisible. A better workaround requires a shortcut that "un-minimizes" all windows and then minimizes them... I tried WIN+M for minimizing and WIN+SHIFT+M for un-minimizing, but the latter only un-minimizes the ones that were minimized with the former, so it's also not an ideal workaround...
EDIT: By doing virtual desktop switching and all of these hotkey combinations in quick succession, something weird happened. One of the "stuck" icons was not 100% invisible, but it was shifted down so that only the tip of the icon was showing at the bottom of the taskbar...
What if the icons aren't missing (it's not a problem of corrupted thumb/icon cache as that workaround doesn't work), instead there's some animation glitch that drops them to a (very far off-screen) Y position?
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.
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.
For me Steps to reproduce:
The apps on one desktop and not on the other lose their icons
