Shortcut Key to Hide Windows Vista Sidebar Behind Other Windows
If you’ve used Windows Vista for any length of time, you probably already know that using the Win + Space key combination will bring the Sidebar and all the gadgets to the front… but how do you send it back behind your open windows?
This was the question reader Kyle asked me earlier tonight, and after some research I discovered that there wasn’t one… so I wrote a utility with this functionality, assigned to the Ctrl+Win + Space key combination.
So you first used the Win + Space key to bring the sidebar and detached gadgets to the foreground:
Now you can use Ctrl+Win + Space to send the sidebar and all detached gadgets back behind the previous foreground window.
Installation
Download and unzip the file, then copy the VistaSidebarHider.exe application into a directory you’d like to keep it in.
Type the following into the Windows Explorer address bar, which is a shortcut to quickly open your Startup folder.
shell:startup
Create a shortcut in that folder to the VistaSidebarHider.exe application.
Running the Application
Just double-click it.
Usage
Use Ctrl+Win + Space to send the sidebar and gadgets to the back.
Shutting Down the Application
You’ll have to use Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager, and then select the process in the list and click on End Process.
Be sure to leave any feedback or complaints in the comments.
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Works great! Thanks, and I didn’t even know about the Winkey + Space combo
That’s neat alright, but all you have to do to send it all back under cover is click. Click just about anywhere. Wooof, its gone.
Interesting project, cool of you to write &share this. ALT+ESC works as well.
I tried your method but it didn’t close the sidebar. Also the ‘close key’ is dead.
But if you right click, a close box opens and you can use that. I enjoy your newsletters and have found
lots of useful things. ross knight
@ross: This isn’t meant to close the sidebar… it’s meant to send it back behind the other windows. The idea is that there’s a hotkey to bring the sidebar to the top, so there should be a hotkey to send it back to the bottom.
@Marty
Alt + Esc is a good combo, I’m betting most people don’t know about it… thanks for mentioning it!
The difference is that Alt+Esc just changes focus back to the current window… very useful, but it doesn’t necessarily send the sidebar to the back of the list, which is what I was trying to do here.
Remove all gadgets to make your computer faster
Yea. I’ve been using Windows+Space and alt+esc ever since I actually utilized the Sidebar.
I’m afraid to edit anything else
suggestion: it would be much easier to use if the same key combo used to bring sidebar to front would also send it back. not sure if it’s easy to implement though, but it might be – something like chaining a hook on the key press, let the key press event go through if the sidebar is not in the front, and consume it (and hide the sidebar) otherwise. i’m not familiar with the windows api though, so i’m not sure this would work.
@stil
The problem is that the key combination is already in use by the actual sidebar, so it makes it a little more difficult to override cleanly.
Nice idea
what I hate though is that unlike the MAC gadgets or the google gadgets, theres no way to make “undocked” gadgets dissapear from the desktop. you can close the sidebar but the undocked gadgets stay there. its quite annoying 
Brilliant! This application is a saver
what’s the chances we can get the script for this? thanks
Can you make it so that they can be hidden behind the desktop itself? That way, we can have the OS X effect to bring them back up… I’ve been looking all over for that kind of functionality for Vista but I don’t think it exists.
I use TrueTransparency on my vista basic machine to add transparency, is it possible to make png images that TrueTransparency uses to blur the background?
Hey, when i double click on the program it does work?
It says:
“An older instance of this script is already running. Replacing it with this instance? Note: to avoid this message, see #SingleInstance in the help file.”
wth?
Doesn’t work with Windows 7 x64