Fix System Tray Icons Missing In Windows 10!

Windows 10 is regularly one of the most common operating systems for the desktop environment. After installing and uninstalling Windows applications and services, You may notice that the icons they leave behind are often empty which appear as blank system tray icons on the taskbar.

Here I shall discuss how you can fix if you see system tray icons missing in Windows 10.

Windows 10 Notification Area Icons Missing

After uninstalling a service or application, if you are left with blank system tray icons, like the battery, network, volume, etc., it is usually caused due to incorrectly stored cache data. If you do face this error, you will need to make a simple registry change in order to solve this error.

Here is how you can reset the notification area icons in Windows 10.

Method 1: Re-Enable Notification Area Icons

Before making changes to the registry, a simple workaround that you can try involves re-enabling the system tray icons from the settings app. If you see just 1 or two system tray icons missing, this may be the solution you need to fix this error on your computer.

To re-enable system tray icons from the taskbar notification area, follow these steps:

1. Open the Settings app using the keyboard shortcut Win + I.
2. Go to the Personalization section.
3. From the left pane, select Taskbar.
4. In the right column, scroll down to the Notification area section.
5. Click on the ‘Turn system icons on or off’ option.
6. First, turn the toggle towards off, and then towards on for the icons that are missing from the notification tray.

Method 2: Reset Notification Area Icons By Modifying Registry Keys

Instead of pulling the icon data from the installation folder every time, the icons are actually pulled from a cache library. If you see Windows 10 notification area icons missing, you have to reset this cache library, which can be done from the registry editor.

Follow these steps for the same:

1. Type Regedit in Windows Search or a Run dialog and press Enter to launch the Registry Editor. Click on Yes in the User Account Control prompt.
2. Now, exit the Windows Explorer. To do so, press and hold Ctrl + Shift keys while right-clicking on the taskbar.
3. This will add a new Exit Explorer option in the context menu. Click on this option to exit explorer.
4. Now, go back to the registry editor and navigate to the following location by pasting the following path in the address bar of the Registry Editor:
   Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\LocalSettings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify
5. From the right pane, delete the ‘Icon Streams’ and ‘Past Icon Streams’
6. Now, restart the Explorer using the task manager. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc and click on File > Run new task,
7. Type explorer.exe and press Enter to restart Windows Explorer.

Wrapping Up

So there you have it. Now you know how to fix if you see system tray icons missing Windows 10, using the methods provided above. Did you find this useful? Comment below if you find this useful, and to discuss further the same.