Everything gohide does
A complete look at how gohide hides apps cleanly and brings them back exactly as they were.
Features
One tool to hide windows and tray icons cleanly
Most "window hiders" leave a tray icon or a taskbar button behind. gohide removes every trace you choose — and restores it cleanly — even on the latest Windows 11, where other tools quietly give up.
Hide windows & taskbar entry
Remove an app's windows and its taskbar button in one move. Nothing flashes on screen; nothing lingers in Alt-Tab.
Hide system-tray icons
The part most tools get wrong. gohide hides apps' tray icons too — not just their windows — and keeps them hidden until you restore them. It keeps working on the latest Windows 11, where most window hiders quietly fail.
Dynamic selection (Pro)
Hide apps by window title or class instead of picking each one — e.g. every File Explorer window. New matching windows are caught the instant they appear, and stay hidden until you turn the rule off. Pro rules survive a reboot, so a program that auto-starts with Windows is hidden automatically.
Global hotkeys
One hotkey hides everything at once; plus per-app hide/show and a hotkey to summon gohide. They all work system-wide, even when gohide is just a tray icon.
Restore all at once
One hotkey brings everything back at once — nothing gets stranded, and everything returns exactly where it was.
Suspend or mute while hidden
Optionally pause a hidden process so background games and heavy apps stop using CPU and GPU while off-screen — or just mute it so a background video stays silent. Resumes the moment you restore it.
Privacy cover screen (Pro)
The moment you press “Hide all”, a full-screen cover — a plain dark screen or any image you choose — drops over the desktop. Press Esc or the restore hotkey to lift it.
Start with Windows, elevated
Start automatically with Windows, already elevated, with no UAC prompt — via a Task Scheduler task, not a fragile Run key.
English & 简体中文
The app follows your Windows language automatically, with a manual override. The website does too.
Light and fast
gohide stays small and quiet — no bloat, no background web services, no account servers. It barely touches your system resources.
How it works
Three steps to a clean desktop
Pick the apps
gohide lists running apps (and tray-only ones). Tick the ones you want to manage.
Assign hotkeys
Give each app a hide/show hotkey, plus a global restore-all. Set it once.
Hide & restore
Hit the hotkey — the windows and tray icons you chose hide. Hit it again — everything's back, exactly where it was.
Trust & privacy
Built to be trusted on your machine
gohide is engineered to be safe and transparent by default: it runs locally, changes nothing permanently, and is easy to verify.
Fully reversible
Nothing gohide hides is ever deleted or permanently changed. One keystroke restores every window, taskbar button and tray icon exactly where it was — and gohide only acts on your own windows on your own machine.
Offline, perpetual license
Activation happens entirely on your own PC and works without an internet connection — no account, and no license server is ever contacted.
No accounts, no tracking
gohide has no accounts and no analytics, and runs no background web service — it never sees or sends what you hide.
Clean and contained
gohide keeps to itself: it doesn't change the apps you hide, and removing gohide leaves your system exactly as it was.
Take back your taskbar.
Download gohide free and hide your first app in under a minute.