Implementing Taskbar Corner Customizer for SysAdmins

In this guide you will learn how to implement Taskbar Corner Customizer in your IT environment.

Download Files

As soon as your order has been completed, you are able to download the necessary files. You will also receive an email with the links.

There are two zip files which you can download:

  • Service Installer
    This is the MSI-based installer which will install the Taskbar Corner Customizer Windows service on your end-points. This Service must be installed and running on all clients where you want to customize tray icon visibility.
  • Group Policy ADMX Template
    The Group Policy Administrative template which can be added to SYSVOL in your domain to allow for GPO configuration of tray icon visibility.

Install Windows Service

Our Windows service is used to read and apply the settings configured by Group Policy.

You need to install this service on each client where you want to control tray icon visibility with Taskbar Corner Customizer.

Copy License Key

After your order has completed, you will automatically receive your license key by email.

Copy the license key. Make sure to select everything in between the two ‘COPY’ lines.

Manual Installation

Before you do a broad deploy of the Windows Service, you can test everything locally on a single machine.

  • Run the installer TaskbarCornerCustomizer.msi
  • Enter your license key and click Install
Provide the license during the installation

Silent Installation

When installing the Windows Service using a deployment solution such as Endpoint Manager, you should use the silent installation command.

Prepare Package

Your package needs to contain two files:

  • TaskbarCornerCustomizer.msi
  • A license file, e.g. license.txt

Create a text file and paste your license. This file should be located in the same folder as the MSI installer.

Create a license.txt file in the package containing your license

Command Line

Use the following command to run the installation in silent mode:

msiexec /i TaskbarCornerCustomizer.msi LICENSEFILE="license.txt" /qn

Install ADMX files

If you want to display or hide tray icons using a GPO, you need to first install the Administrative Group Policy (ADMX) template.

  • Copy the contents of the ADMX.zip file to the PolicyDefinitions folder in SYSVOL on your domain controller.

PolicyDefinitions are located here:

\\example.com\SYSVOL\example.com\policies\PolicyDefinitions
  • The TaskbarCornerCustomizer.admx file should be copied to PolicyDefinitions folder
  • The en-US\TaskbarCornerCustomizer.adml file should be copied to PolicyDefinitions\en-US folder

List Tray Icon Processes

Before we configure which tray icons should be visible or hidden, we need to know the process name for our tray icons.

Included in the Service Installer is a tool called TaskbarCornerCustomizer.ListIcons.exe which lists all available tray icons for the current user.

The tool can be found in %ProgramFiles%\Taskbar Corner Customizer given that Taskbar Corner Customizer has been installed.

This tool can also run from other clients, even if the service has not yet been installed. The following files are required to run the List Icons tool:

  • TaskbarCornerCustomizer.License.txt
  • TaskbarCornerCustomizer.ListIcons.exe

Configure GPO

In Group Policy Management Editor, choose to edit a GPO.

Group Policy settings for tray icon visibility are available to both Machine and User-targeted configuration.

Choose to edit either the ‘Always show…‘ or the ‘Never show…‘ setting.

Tray icons specified as never show will be moved to the Taskbar Corner ‘overflow menu‘.

The process names entered is matched with a wildcard / contains match against the available tray icon processes. E.g:

  • Greenshot will match C:\Users\UserOne\AppData\Local\Greenshot\Greenshot.exe
  • Greenshot\Greenshot.exe will match C:\Users\UserOne\AppData\Local\Greenshot\Greenshot.exe

A few notes

  • Tray icon visibility will be updated by the Taskbar Corner Customizer Windows service immediately when the GPO’s registry value is written to the end point.
  • The user-targeted registry values are written to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\TaskbarCornerCustomizer
  • The machine-targeted registry values are written to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\TaskbarCornerCustomizer
  • GPO settings are tattooing, i.e. if a tray icon is configured to always show, it will always show until it is configured to never show (or a user changes the tray icon visibility).
  • GPO settings will be applied continously. If a user chooses to hide a tray icon which is configured to always show, the tray icon will toggle back to always show after a while – as long as the always show setting is configured for the tray icon.