Change “Only show notifications” default

Question

I see in Windows 7 that when you do not have the Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar option enabled (see below), the setting for individual applications is to Only show notifications.

Is there a magical way of changing the default to Show icon and notifications (see below) instead of Only show notifications?

I.e. when a new application comes along and adds an icon to the system tray, it defaults to showing the icon and notifications. I like the majority of the icons down there as they offer quick access to whatever programs are running BUT I still want to selectively hide the few that I do not want to see down there.

If I enable Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar I can't hide any. If I disable it, I have to go through every single application in the list and change the option, then keep my eye on it for any new applications. Hence my question.

Answer 1

Old post I know, but just in case...

I think you are probably looking for something similar to the MSDN article here which shows hows to disable the Backup and Restore auto-notification.

As stated previously, this will probably require a registry edit. Probably in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\NotificationArea but found something which might work over at EggheadCafe which looked worth a try.

Answer 2

Seems like a registry hack might solve this, but I'm not a fan of having to hack your OS for basic stuff like this. That being the case, my simple answer would be that you are stuck with what Windows 7 gives you, which if you put it in perspective, you are not installing new apps all the time - just once in a while.

I agree that Windows 7 needs a way of doing this with apps but for now it seems you're stuck outside of hacking the registry :-/