Windows 10 Action Center is the place to keep your computer’s notifications, but it also includes a series of “Quick Actions”. These are touch-friendly buttons that allow you to quickly access popular options and functions, such as switching to tablet mode, Quick Note, changing your network, and enabling the way on.
While these Quick Actions are useful for many users, some users may keep them hidden to reduce the Action Center’s complexity or avoid accidentally selecting one of the Quick Actions buttons, especially when in use. Windows 10 on the Device touch screen. By default, Windows 10 lets you “Collapse” a list of Quick Actions, but this still displays the top four Actions. Those who want to hide Quick Actions completely can be done with a quick trip to the Windows Registry.
Hide Quick Actions in the Action Center
Before we get started, it’s important to note that the Windows Registry is an essential component of your computer’s operating system. Deleting or modifying incorrect Registry entries can lead to corruption of your Windows installation and loss of your data. Hence, before making any changes to the Registry, make sure to back up your data and take care when modifying the entry.
To get started, first start Registry Editor by searching for regedit from the Start Menu.
Once Registry Editor is open, use the hierarchy on the left side of the window to navigate to the following location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE Microsoft Shell ActionCenter Quick Actions
Left-click once to select the Quick Actions key, and you will see an item on the right side of the screen labeled “PinnedQuickActionSlotCount”. Double click this item, and you will see a “4” in the Value data box. This indicates the number of Quick Actions displayed when the “Collapse” list is in Action Center.
To hide all Quick Actions:
- Change this value to “0” (zero).
- Click OK to save your changes.
- Log out of your user account and then return or restart Explorer.exe from Task Manager.
- Once you’ve logged back in or restarted Explorer, open the Action Center, and you’ll see that all Quick Actions icons are hidden when the list is “Collapsed”.
But don’t worry! All of your Quick Actions are still there and can be accessed by clicking “Expand”.
Restore Quick Actions in the Action Center
Once you’ve hidden the Quick Actions icons from the Action Center, you can restore the default behavior by going back to the location identified above in the Windows Registry and changing the Value data to the DWORD value back to “4. ” Instead, you can change that Value to customize the number of Quick Actions that are displayed when the “Collapse” list is in Action Center. For example, changing the value to “2” will display only your first two Quick Actions icons.
Remember that you must either log off or restart Explorer to see the change each time you change to the Quick Action count.