Hello lovely people 🙂
In this edition of our computer repairs blog we will learn how to create a shortcut to turn desktop icons on and off. Have you got lots of icons cluttering up your desktop space? If you are one of those who have loads just sitting there, you might want a fast way to turn them off without using the context menu, so here is a quick and easy way to make a shortcut key to.
We will need use a small utility written by one of the Desktop Sidebar programmers (an alternate sidebar with loads of modules). Just so we are completely clear on it, this utility does the same thing as a right-click on the desktop and toggling the “Show Desktop Icons” item.
The first thing you need to do is download the HideDesktopIcons application and save it somewhere other than the desktop (it will be rather useless there ;). You could put it under your Programme Files folder if you wanted to. Just make sure it is put where it cannot be deleted.
All you need to do if you are using Windows 7 is right-click on the file and choose Pin to Taskbar or Pin to Start Menu; it all depends on where you want it. We’ will put it on the Start Menu so we can assign a hotkey to it.
If you are using a previous version of Windows and you would like to put it on the Quick Launch bar, you can do that by opening up Explorer and typing the following into the address bar—just keep in mind that shortcuts on the Quick Launch bar do not allow shortcut keys, so you will need to copy it to the Start Menu as well. shell:Quick Launch
You now have a shortcut you can use for quick access.
To assign a hotkey, simply right-click on the shortcut in the Start Menu and choose *Properties* to assign a hotkey (we use Ctrl+Alt+D since it’s easy to remember). Now you can access the desktop icons through a shortcut key or shortcut icon.
I do hope our computer repairs tricks and tweaks are helping.
Over and out
MobileGeekette
