Bring icons back to the taskbar
The most important icons appear on the far right of the taskbar, close to the clock and date. Click the speech bubble here to open the action centre, where you can also find sliders to turn on and off common functions, like the mobile hotspot, or to open Windows’ full range of settings.
That’s all useful, but turning these options on and off can result in icons disappearing or changing their appearance. For example, switching off Wi-fi by clicking Network, then Wifi will replace the Wi-fi icon with a globe icon (pictured above right). To get your network connection back, click the globe, then Wifi.
Sometimes, icons disappear because the components in your computer that they relate to have been disabled, either because you changed a setting or because a file has become corrupted. Sticking with your wireless connection for a moment, if your Wi-fi icon has disappeared and the step above doesn’t reveal it, type device into the Start menu, click ‘Device Manager’ in the results, then click the arrow beside ‘Network adapters’ to reveal that section’s hidden entries.
You’ll probably have several network adapters installed, but their names will help you tell them apart. Right-click any that show Wireless or similar ( 1 in our screenshot left), then in the menu that appears click any options that say Enable Device (this will appear only if the device has been disabled). Should this cause any problems, you’ll find an option to disable the component again in the same menu. There’s also an option to ‘Update driver’ 2 . Click this, then click ‘Search automatically for drivers’. Windows will search its catalogue for any updates and install them if it finds any. If it doesn’t, it will tell you that you’re already running the latest driver.
If any other icons are absent, check that they haven’t been disabled. Right-click an empty space on the taskbar, followed by ‘Taskbar settings’. Scroll down to ‘Notification area’ and click ‘Select which
icons appear on the taskbar’, then use the sliders beside each option to enable or disable them (see screenshot above).
If you don’t want to set each option individually, click the slider beside ‘Always show all icons in the notification area’. When you enable this option, all of the icons that are hidden and would usually only appear when you click the up-pointing icon on the taskbar will be displayed alongside the clock. This is very useful if you frequently need to access icon-based settings, like those for Windows Security, that have a tendency to tuck themselves out of sight.
You’ll notice a vertical line on the taskbar, just a few pixels in from the far right of the screen. It looks like Windows hasn’t quite drawn the taskbar long enough, but this isn’t an error: it’s separating a very narrow icon with no discernible features from the rest of the taskbar. Click to the right of the line to hide all your windows and jump to the desktop. It’s a handy trick to know, should you be surprised by someone you’re shopping for online coming into the room. Clicking again reinstates all your original windows.
In its default state, hovering over the icon doesn’t do anything, but you can set it to preview the desktop should there be something you need to refer to there. To do so, open Settings (press Windows key+i) then click Personalisation followed by Taskbar. Click the fifth slider, below ‘Use Peek to preview the desktop’.
Finally, if you’ve updated Windows 10 since 9 June, you may have noticed the icon for Microsoft's ‘News and interests’
widget appear appear on your taskbar. If you don’t want it, right-click the icon or an empty part of the taskbar, hover over ‘News and interests’, then select ‘Turn off’ from the menu (see screenshot below left).