Don’t know about you, but I love using the Quick Launch to launch all of my programs and display the desktop without having to hit the Start button or manually minimize each window! In this post, I’ll show you how to customize the Quick Launch and add buttons to it, or if you already have a toolbar but lost the Show Desktop button, I’ll show you how to get it back!
Since this post was written back in 2007, the Quick Launch bar is hidden in newer versions of Windows. It is enabled by default in Windows XP and Windows Vista, but in Windows 7 and Windows 8, the Quick Launch is disabled by default. I will show you how to enable the toolbar on two new operating systems.
Windows XP Quick Launch Toolbar
First, if the Quick Launch toolbar does not appear at all (the toolbar is usually located to the right of the Start button), then the toolbar is not configured to display. If you open a program and the toolbar is not displayed, you will see that the program window is to the right of the Start button:
To display the toolbar with the Show Desktop button by default, you need to right-click anywhere on the taskbar other than the Start button or any application window and select Toolbars. You will get a list of toolbars and one of the options should be “Quick Launch”:
If Quick Launch is not checked, be sure to check it. You should now see that there are several icons in the section to the right of the Start button. You can hover over the icons if they are already there. There is always an icon for the desktop shortcut as shown here:
Now you can remove and add programs to the Quick Launch. To remove an icon, just right-click the icon and select Remove. Remember that this will not remove your program, only the program shortcut. If you want to add programs to the toolbar, just drag icons from your desktop or from the Start menu to the toolbar, and you will see the position become a solid black line.
Here you can see that I was dragging and dropping Notepad from the start menu to the toolbar, and you can see a black vertical line between the other icons that are already there. Just drop it and it will go into this position.
Now you can also see that all of your icons don’t fit and there is a >> icon at the right end of the toolbar to see the rest of them. To expand the toolbar, you need to unlock the taskbar first. Right click on the taskbar again and you will see the Lock Taskbar checkbox is checked. If so, click on it to uncheck it.
Now, to the left and right of the toolbar, you will see two dotted “grips” that you can click and drag to increase the size as you see fit.
Just right click on the taskbar and select Lock Taskbar again to get rid of the pens!
Restore Show Desktop from Quick Launch Toolbar
If you don’t have the Show Desktop icon, you can get it back by following these steps:
1. Click Start, Run, type Notepad and click OK.
2. In Notepad, enter the following text on separate lines:
[Shell]
Command = 2
IconFile = explorer.exe, 3
[Taskbar]
Command = ToggleDesktop
3. From the File menu, click Save As, and then save the file to your desktop as Show Desktop.scf. Be sure to select “All Files” from the “File Type” dropdown list. If you don’t select All Files, Notepad will automatically add the .txt extension to the file name. Remove this extension if present. The file name should be Show Desktop.scf.
Now, just grab the icon from where you saved it and drag it back to the Quick Launch bar and you’re back in business!
Quick Launch Toolbar in Windows 7 and Windows 8
Now let’s talk about Windows 7 and Windows 8. The reason Microsoft removed the toolbar is because you can now pin applications to the taskbar as shown below.
Basically, it looks like the best version of the Quick Launch toolbar, so most people don’t care about enabling the toolbar at all. Anyway, if you want to bring it back to Windows 7 along with the Show Desktop shortcut, you can do so by following these steps.
1. Go ahead and right-click an empty part of the taskbar, select Toolbars and then New Toolbar.
2. Now copy and paste the following line into the “Folder” field in the dialog box that appears and click “Select Folder”.
% AppData% Microsoft Internet Explorer Quick Launch
You should now see the Quick Launch bar appearing in the far right corner of the task bar with the words “Quick Launchâ€.
3. Now, to get rid of the words “fast startup”, you need to right-click on the taskbar and uncheck the “Lock taskbar” box. Once the taskbar is unlocked, you can right-click on the Quick Launch and uncheck the Show Text and Show Title options.
You can now expand the toolbar by clicking and dragging the little handle on the left. All icons will be small, but you can enlarge them by right-clicking the grip and choosing Large Icons from the View option.
As you can see, this is basically the same as pinning an application to the taskbar, only they appear on the right and not on the left. So why add the Quick Launch Bar to Windows 7 or 8? Well, there is one nice advantage – there are two default icons: “Show desktop” and “Switch between windows.” “Show Desktop” takes you directly to the desktop, and the other button is basically like pressing ALT + TAB on your keyboard, except it’s better because it uses a cool 3D effect instead of just showing thumbnails in a grid
You can follow this same procedure on Windows 8.1 and it works great, I tested it. I’m not sure about Windows 8 because the bar at the bottom of the screen was not introduced until Windows 8.1. If you have Windows 8, you should probably still upgrade to 8.1. If you have any problems, let us know in the comments. Enjoy!
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