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Hide the Recycle Bin Icon Text on Windows Vista

The recycle bin is really obvious. We've been seeing the same thing since Windows 95, so having text on the icon to tell us what it is seems a little unnecessary. With a little registry patch, we can easily remove the text.

Just download the registry patch, unzip, and then double-click on the file. You'll get a bunch of UAC prompts asking if you really want to do this.

After the patch has been added, right click on the desktop and choose Refresh, and you should see your new Recycle Bin icon without the text:

This is pretty sweet.

If you want to restore the Recycle Bin icon text, you can download this registry patch instead, unzip, and then double-click on the file. Your recycle bin text will go back to normal.

If you want to hide the text on regular desktop icons, you can follow this guide.

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. When he's not coming up with great how-to articles, he's probably writing at his personal blog. This article was written on 02/17/07 and tagged with: Windows Vista, Desktop Customization

Comments (12)

  1. jason

    How to you go back and put the text back in place after removing the recycling bin text

  2. The Geek

    I've updated the article with with instructions on how to put the icon back to normal.

  3. Daenyte

    I just used your other tip Alt-255 on Vista Ultimate and made the text on the Recycle Bin disappear.

  4. Jon

    excellent info. spent ages going through microsoft site trying to restore recycle bin without success….went to this site and restored it within seconds….thankyou.

  5. johnnyworkaholic

    i renamed icons on my desktop as instructed however i got a strange side effect.
    The "COMPUTER" item in my start menu disappeared. the tooltip stilll shows up and indicate that it is still COMPUTER but the text disappered. i tried reversing but it ddnt work. pls help.

  6. Wilco

    Use ALT + 255 to rename it and you have the same hihi

  7. XX

    or right click> rename and push the spacebar once.

  8. johnnyworkaholic

    renaming and undoing the rename of icons is not my problem. After i renamed icons, my MENU got a strange effect. The start MENU lost the text for MY COMPUTER. I reversed the renaming process but the Start MENU ddnt restore the txt lost. The txt in the START MENU "My Computer" is missing

  9. aaa

    Yeah.. just rename and type a space… lets make this harder than it is (for that is the PC way).

  10. Omar

    I accidently erase the recycle bin ico from my laptop. I want to restore it but I dont find it…

  11. Dan

    This works but I can not seem to rename the icon for network. Any ideas?

  12. Daniel

    Does it works in XP SP2 ?


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