Whatever happened to… the Show Desktop button?

Q My old Windows XP and 7 computers both have a button on the taskbar that I can click to show the Windows desktop. I use this often on those PCS but there’s no such button on my new Windows 10 laptop, so I find myself minimising several windows to reach the desktop. Whatever happened to this button? And is there any way to get it back? Mike Fletcher

A The proper name of the button you’re talking about is ‘Show Desktop’. It wasn’t displayed by default in Windows 7 but you might’ve resurrected it by following instructions we printed around the time that operating system was launched (July, 2009).

You can still do this but you might not need to. Microsoft removed the button because with Windows 7 it introduced a new feature called Aero Peek, which did a similar thing — though you might never have realised it. Just hover the mouse cursor over the little vertical strip at the far-right of the taskbar and the desktop will show. If you move the cursor away, your open windows will return; but if you click, the desktop will stay. The same feature exists in Window 8/8.1 and 10, although it’s just called Peek now.

So that’s why the Show Desktop button disappeared. But if you still want it back, here’s what to do. First rightclick any blank part of the Desktop, point to New and click Shortcut. In the ‘Type the location...’ box, type explorer.exe shell:::{3080f90d-d7ad11D9-BD98-0000947B0257}. To avoid mistakes typing this code, you can visit our Pastebin page at www.snipca. com/21755 and just copy it from there, using Control (Ctrl)+c, and then Ctrl+v to paste it into the box. Click Next, type Show Desktop as the name of the shortcut and then click Finish.

To give it the familiar Show Desktop icon, right-click the new shortcut and choose Properties followed by the shortcut tab. Click Change Icon, select the relevant icon, then click OK twice (see screenshot above left). Right-click the new shortcut again, then choose ‘Pin to taskbar’.