Over time, many invalid or obsolete taskbar notification icons may appear on the “Customize notifications” or the “Select which icons appear on the Taskbar” page with invalid or missing icons.
On Windows 11, the setting is called “Taskbar corner overflow.” It’s located under Personalization → Taskbar, in the Settings app.
This article describes how to clear the past and current items list in the Customize Notifications dialog in Windows. Information and the script here apply to all versions of Windows, including Windows 10 and Windows 11.
How to Clear Customize Notifications Icons in Windows
Option 1: Clearing the Customize Notification icons Using Script
Here is a VBScript (for Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10, and 11) that clears the customize notification icons for you.
- Close all your running programs.
- Download clear-notification-items.zip
- Unzip and run the
clear-notification-items.vbsscript file. It clears Customize Notifications items and restarts the Explorer shell automatically.
Here is what the customize notifications dialog (“Select which icons appear on the Taskbar”) looks like after clearing the obsolete entries.
Customize Notifications Dialog after clearing. Programs will re-add their icons. You can see that the blank icons on the left are also fixed. (Compare Snagit icons.)
Option 2: Clearing the Customize Notification icons manually
To clear the Customize Notifications items list manually using the Registry Editor, follow these steps:
- Open Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Esc
- Exit (don’t restart) the Explorer shell cleanly. See instructions for Windows Vista/7, Windows 8 & 10.
Exit Explorer in Windows 11?: Since Windows 11 doesn’t have the “Exit Explorer” GUI menu option, Windows 11 users can use the script method (“Option 1”) instead, or use Task Manager to end the Explorer.exe process. It won’t be a graceful termination, though.
- At this point, the Taskbar and your desktop icons wouldn’t be visible. From the Task Manager’s File menu, launch the Registry Editor (
regedit.exe) - In the Registry Editor, navigate to the following branch:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify
- Delete the two values, namely IconStreams and PastIconsStream
- Exit the Registry Editor.
- From the Task Manager’s File menu, launch
Explorer.exe. This starts the Windows shell again.
The Windows shell is the graphical user interface for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Its primary elements consist of the desktop, the taskbar, and the Start menu.
This clears your customize notification tray icons in the Taskbar in all versions of Windows, including Windows 11.
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Fantastic script! Glad to see you’ve added Windows 7 support. Thank you.
Thanks so much, it worked!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH IT WORKED SO FINE but the manual deletion didn’t work as there were no such values as iconstreams and pasticonsstream on windows 7
thanks!
no luck with the manual attempt, but the script worked perfectly, and will no doubt come in handy again…
good work!
I’ve been looking for this ages too! THANK YOU! but manual version does not work, don’t even waste your time. script version works as a CHARM!
Bingo. Many thanks for the script. IT WORKS. The manual version does not.
Re: “The manual system did not work”
Instead of deleting the registry entries using the keyboard delete key, right click on the entry and select delete in the pop-up menu.
the manual doesn’t work, but the script worked, thank you so much>>
Worked like a charm and deleted the junk in a second, great work and I’m sure that the script will come in handy again…
Thanks
George
Used it and it works fine, many thanks!
December 2012
just used it again and it works perfectly so thank you again…
Just used your automated .vbs script and it worked perfectly. Bye bye stubborn, old tray icons .. hello cleaned out tray! Fantastic stuff Ramesh and many thanks. 😀
Thank you, thank you, thank you for the automated.vbs script, it worked like a charm! Another computer aggravation bit the dust. The old stubborn crap is gone!
I LOVE YOU so much !
That VBS script is awesome !
The “clear-notification-items.vbs” zip worked like a charm! It doesn’t get any easier than that!
AWESOME !!! THANKS A MILLION!!!
This is awesome!! it fixed my little annoying problem I was having with my Battery power icon disappearing! <3
Excellent little program. VB script worked in seconds
I had to forcibly remove an old anti-virus and it left an annoying little icon that I couldn’t find anywhere else but in the notifications tray. Junk cleaner, registry hunt-down, skimming through files to find it nothing worked. This little magic file though…whatever it is and however it does it WORKED! I’m definitely going to use this in the future 🙂
Thank you for the VBS at https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/clear-customize-notifications-tray-items-windows-7-vista-xp/ However, it didn’t work on my Windows 10 laptop, because the domain part of strCurrentUserName is upper-case, whilst strUserDomain is mixed-case. I fixed this by changing line 41 to
If UCase(strUserDomain & "\" & strNameOfUser) = UCase(strCurrentUserName)then and now it works perfectly 🙂 Cheers, JulieDear Sir,
Would you please to modify the VBS Script File to work on Windows 10 x64.
Since I was unsuccessfully clear by Regedit manaully.
Thanks in advance
Please correct the hyperlink to the “Windows 8 and 10” article in Option 2, step 5: “Terminate the Explorer Shell cleanly. See instructions for Windows Vista & 7, Windows 8 and 10” as it currently resolves to a “Server not found” page.
The URL currently associated with the link is http://wwww.winhelponline.com/blog/exit-explorer-restart-windows-10-8/ (note the one “w” too many in “wwww.”). Thanks for the article!
Thanks @GregR. The hyperlink has been fixed.
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Does it work with Windows 11 ?
@bRonCOde: Yes. The script and the manual method work on Windows 11 as well.