Managing the Windows 10 Taskbar with PowerShell

When I'm working on a Pluralsight course, I tend to setup a virtual machine for recording. Although, lately I've been trying with Windows 10 Sandbox. This is handy when all I need is a Windows 10 desktop. When I setup the system, I have particular settings I need to configure. Naturally I use a PowerShell script to automate the process. One item that I wanted to address was Windows 10 taskbar. When I'm recording a course, I like to have it auto-hide. Sure, I could manually set it. But that's no fun.

After a little online research I came across this page. In addition to the manual steps, the author also provided a snippet of PowerShell code! I assumed there would be registry setting I could configure and was hoping to find that. But this was even better. The author's code was written to be used from a CMD prompt to invoke a few PowerShell commands. But since I'm already using PowerShell for my desktop configuration, I took his code and created re-usable PowerShell functions.

The hack is to modify the registry key found at 'HKCU:SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StuckRects3'. The Settings key is binary. But in PowerShell, it will be shown as an array.

To toggle the auto-hide setting for the Taskbar, all you need to so is set item [8]. A value of 3 will enable auto-hide and 2 will turn it off. There is one caveat, and that is you need to restart the Explorer process for the change to take effect. No problem. I can use Stop-Process. Want to see what I came up with?

#requires -version 5.1

# https://www.howtogeek.com/677619/how-to-hide-the-taskbar-on-windows-10/

Function Enable-AutoHideTaskBar {
    #This will configure the Windows taskbar to auto-hide
    [cmdletbinding(SupportsShouldProcess)]
    [Alias("Hide-TaskBar")]
    [OutputType("None")]
    Param()

    Begin {
        Write-Verbose "[$((Get-Date).TimeofDay) BEGIN  ] Starting $($myinvocation.mycommand)"
        $RegPath = 'HKCU:SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StuckRects3'
    } #begin
    Process {
        if (Test-Path $regpath) {
            Write-Verbose "[$((Get-Date).TimeofDay) PROCESS] Auto Hiding Windows 10 TaskBar"
            $RegValues = (Get-ItemProperty -Path $RegPath).Settings
            $RegValues[8] = 3

            Set-ItemProperty -Path $RegPath -Name Settings -Value $RegValues

            if ($PSCmdlet.ShouldProcess("Explorer", "Restart")) {
                #Kill the Explorer process to force the change
                Stop-Process -Name explorer -Force
            }
        }
        else {
            Write-Warning "Can't find registry location $regpath."
        }
    } #process
    End {
        Write-Verbose "[$((Get-Date).TimeofDay) END    ] Ending $($myinvocation.mycommand)"
    } #end

}

Function Disable-AutoHideTaskBar {
    #This will disable the Windows taskbar auto-hide setting
    [cmdletbinding(SupportsShouldProcess)]
    [Alias("Show-TaskBar")]
    [OutputType("None")]
    Param()

    Begin {
        Write-Verbose "[$((Get-Date).TimeofDay) BEGIN  ] Starting $($myinvocation.mycommand)"
        $RegPath = 'HKCU:SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\StuckRects3'
    } #begin
    Process {
        if (Test-Path $regpath) {
            Write-Verbose "[$((Get-Date).TimeofDay) PROCESS] Auto Hiding Windows 10 TaskBar"
            $RegValues = (Get-ItemProperty -Path $RegPath).Settings
            $RegValues[8] = 2

            Set-ItemProperty -Path $RegPath -Name Settings -Value $RegValues

            if ($PSCmdlet.ShouldProcess("Explorer", "Restart")) {
                #Kill the Explorer process to force the change
                Stop-Process -Name explorer -Force
            }
        }
        else {
            Write-Warning "Can't find registry location $regpath."
        }
    } #process
    End {
        Write-Verbose "[$((Get-Date).TimeofDay) END    ] Ending $($myinvocation.mycommand)"
    } #end

}

Because I'm making changes to the registry and killing a process, the functions have support for -WhatIf. Set-ItemProperty will inherit the WhatIf preference. Technically, so will Stop-Process, but I wanted to demonstrate how you can add your own WhatIf handling for commands that don't recognize -WhatIf.

The command is written to work locally and only affects the current user. The functions also have aliases that are clearer, and task specific.

You may not need the commands, but I hope there is a technique or concept you find useful.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have got to get this new course recorded.

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