External device fails to trigger "Eject Media" taskbar icon

Windows 10 is doing something small and seemingly harmless that nevertheless bugs me, and I'm wondering if anyone here has thoughts as to how I might fix it?

Usually, when I plug an external device into my laptop's USB port (thumb drive, burner, backup drive, media player, phone, etc), a tiny "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" icon appears in the corner of my taskbar:



(Right-clicking on the icon allows the device to be unplugged safely.)

But yesterday I got a new device—an iPod Touch—that, when plugged into the USB port, doesn't trigger the "Eject Media" icon. Windows IS seeing the device, because the device shows up in iTunes. However, the icon is missing from the taskbar.

Any ideas as to why this one device, out of ALL the external devices I own, fails to evoke the "Eject Media" icon? Windows' taskbar settings haven't yielded any clues.

Thanks!

Thanks very much, gents.

So is Windows 10 introducing in a new feature? Is it now safe to ignore the "Eject Media" icon when it does pop up.....and just pull the plug on an external device?

That makes sense.

Appreciate your help, bro67.

Hi BrooksNYC, Welcome to 10F!

Just some related thoughts; I was getting the same behavior of no 'safely remove icon' when using my flash drives and SD cards I was on 1803 at the time and there's two ways you can get the icon.

The first is with this Tutorial: Create Safely Remove Hardware shortcut in Windows 10 and I followed this one from Bastet's post #5, if you want to you can click on the small blue icon next to Bastet's name in the quote and it will take you to the post as it is in context with that particular thread.

Bastet said:

Have you tried this:
For safe eject USB notification missing:
• Press keyboard*"win + R"
• Type "regedit"
• Search the value "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Notification\Settings\Microsoft.Explore r.Notification.{...}"
• If you REG_DWORD 0x00000001(0) set "0" you can double click on value. Set the value*data to "1"
• Click "OK"

I'm not sure of the tutorial but I followed the second and it put a context menu item in the list that I use plus the icon on the taskbar. The registry hasn't seemed to have a negative effect now that I'm on 1903. Back then I had wondered if Windows was leaning towards have certain devices 'hot swappable'.

Thanks for the welcome, and for the nifty reg hack. .

If I decide to play around with it (just for the halibut), I'll be careful to back up the registry beforehand. Will report back later.

Regards!

You're welcome. Yep, make those back-ups!