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I find they frequently get stuck open if you have a near-full-screen application open.

Is it possible to disable them?

3 Answers 3

21

Open "regedit" as adminstrator.

Navigate to:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]

Find "ShowInfoTip", right-click and select "Modify" and change the value to "0"

5
  • 2
    this is a life saver... I was thinking of going back to windows XP ;)
    – playcat
    Apr 1, 2012 at 20:39
  • 2
    This hides all tooltips, right? Not just those in the taskbar? If so, it's worth making that explicitly clear in your answer. May 29, 2012 at 13:33
  • 2
    For some reason this does not work for me. I double-checked the key and value and they are as mentioned. If I leave my mouse over some pinned programs on the taskbar, the tooltip always show. I run Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, SP1. Aug 23, 2012 at 19:31
  • 2
    Didn't work for me, either, on Windows 7 pro x64.
    – bgmCoder
    Apr 12, 2013 at 1:00
  • 1
    something had re-enabled this undesirable feature (keeps covering things you want to click)
    – zzapper
    Jul 30, 2015 at 15:37
19

You might be experiencing this issue, described on Microsoft's Q/A forum:

Why does the tooltip display on taskbar icons when I am not hovering my cursor on them?

The suggestion there is to make sure your video drivers are up to date. For a momentary fix, you can try:

  1. Holding Shift and right-clicking on a tile.
  2. If that doesn't work, try killing dwm.exe.
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  • 2
    So far, shift-right-click has been working for me. I prefer to do this every once in a while rather than completely disable the tooltips.
    – TTT
    Jul 16, 2014 at 14:38
  • 2
    This also works in Windows 8. Sep 30, 2014 at 14:35
2

Click Start>Run, type Gpedit.msc. Under User Configuration>Administrative Templates>Start Menu and Taskbar, enable 'Remove Balloon Tips on Start Menu items'

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  • 2
    Spoke too soon, sorry. This only hides some of the tool tips on the start menu, not all. Boo.
    – Andrew
    May 28, 2017 at 23:20
  • Solved my problem Dec 5, 2018 at 22:56

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