How to hide windows 10 program icons on desktop temporarily?

Im going to a computer repair shop and going to have them take out my battery... its bloated and swollen. When i turn on my laptop, i always have to enter my bitlocker pin... then my windows password and then it goes to my screen.


I will be having a repair shop open my laptop, take out the swollen battery then close it. Then i will turn it on to see if it works... will have it connected to an outlet at the computer shop of course since it has no battery.


Now I want to turn it on... and i want some programs/icons to not be visible because I don't want the person at the shop to see it. Its more of a financial thing with those programs that is shown on the icons. Then when i get back home, i want those icons to show up again on my icon screen. I assume best way to do this is



1. Send all the icons to a specific fold or something? And send them all back to the desktop later on?


2. Click delete on every single program icon and it goes to recycle bin. Then when everything is done and im back home, click on recycle pin and restore back to desktop?

It sounds like you are saying that you yourself will be the person to logon to the computer, which is good.

You can simply right-click on your desktop and choose View > Show desktop icons. This will completely hide all desktop icons. Repeat the same procedure to show them again.

Of course, this is easy for someone to re-enable, but if you are logging on yourself and not handing control over to them, your desktop icons will be hidden from them.

Does that help?

AddRAM said:

In my opinion, You can do that all on your own, no need for a repair shop to do it for you.

Did you order a new battery yet ?

Hi. I don't have the tools to open up my laptop... let alone try to do it. Im going to repair shop tomorrow to have them remove it.


I will be flying back to the US soon after that and don't want to bring a laptop with a swollen battery with me.


I will order the battery when i get back to the US.

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hsehestedt said:

It sounds like you are saying that you yourself will be the person to logon to the computer, which is good.

You can simply right-click on your desktop and choose View > Show desktop icons. This will completely hide all desktop icons. Repeat the same procedure to show them again.

Of course, this is easy for someone to re-enable, but if you are logging on yourself and not handing control over to them, your desktop icons will be hidden from them.

Does that help?

Hi. Well when they take out the battery and close my laptop, they will power it on... then i will have to enter my bitlocker pin etc to get in. Yea i want to be there to see everything. I won't just leave the laptop there and come back later because well... this probably isn't that tough of a job.


Okay the view show desktop icon thing... googled it and see what that is. But is there a way to hide only some icons though? Like it would probably look weird when i log in and then they see... hey how come no icons at all.


I could click delete on each of the ones i want to hide right? By delete them and it sends to recycle bin? Then click on recycle pin later on and click restore? That also works right?

Much easier way to do this....

Simply create a folder on your desktop. Call it whatever you want. In this example, I will use the name "Desktop Icons".

Now, select all the icons that you want to hide, right-click on then and select "Cut", then right-click on the "Desktop Icons" folder and choose "Paste". If you want to take it a step further, Cut and Paste this folder to another location on your HD to hide it even further, but that is not strictly necessary.

NOTE: This won't work for the recycle bin. Don't try to move it to that folder. Leave it on your desktop.

When done, reverse the process by doing a cut / paste of the folder back to your desktop (if you moved it), then cut and paste the contents within this folder back onto your desktop.

I'll follow up with a link to a video demonstrating this process in a little while. I'll post a link to the video in a little while when ready.

Hey thank you. I will check the video in the morning before I go there.

Also so the delete each icon so it goes to recycle bin doesn't work? I'm positive i done this a while back when i did this... those icons went to recycle bin, then i clicked on the recycle pin and clicked restore to original place and it worked. This was a while back though.


I will check out in the morning as its getting late here. Thanks.

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Hey i meant like when i power the laptop on and when the technician also looks at my screen, i dont want them to see certain programs i have available on the desktop icon if that makes sense.



Like i understand if you click start menu etc... then you see more programs but i will be doing all the clicking once they remove the battery and then i power it on... since i have to put the bitlocker password in. Also the windows password as well.


Again i assume they will do this all in front of me with the battery taking out etc as I don't think i will have to leave it there and come back in few hours etc. I will get back to this thread in the morning. Thanks.

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Also one last question. I right clicked on a desktop icon and clicked cut. I didn't paste it to a new folder yet on the desktop. But is the desktop icon after you click cut on it... look really dim? Because that icon looks extremely dim right now.


I then went to another desktop icon and right click and click cut... now the icon for that is dim but the previous desktop icon is no longer dim? How do i undim the current icon now?

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Okay, can i just do this as i tried and this seems to work?



Create new desktop folder and call it desktop icons. Then basically drag any desktop icons i want into the icons folder? Then when i want the desktop icons to show up like normal on my desktop, open the icons folder and click send to desktop for each one of those icons?



Im guessing i can but only difference is when checking the info of each of these icons, instead of each being modified years ago, it would show created today? Heading to bed now and will check tomorrow. Thanks all.

Why do they even need to log into Windows if just removing the battery?

If they get it to boot into the BIOS and your hard drive is there, good enough. When you come back, you can log into Windows and do that final test.

Here is a link to that video. All I do is create a folder anywhere. I created one on an external drive. In my case it is F:\Testing.

Select all the icons you want to hide and do a Cut / Paste from the desktop to that folder. When done, simply Cut / Paste from that folder back to the desktop again. Then you can delete that temporary folder.

As for your question about the recycle bin, I was simply trying to say that you cannot cut and paste the recycle bin to another location.

As dalchina noted, it's a trivial matter for someone to find stuff on the computer, but I understand that you will be there and it's simply a matter of not having certain desktop icons immediately visible to someone glancing at the system and that they won't be having unfettered access to yur system after you logon. This will work for a simple superficial task like that

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