I cannot unpin Firefox from the taskbar
How do I uninstall the Firefox icon from the taskbar? The standard article on the Firefox Support website is `How to pin and unpin Firefox from the taskbar on Windows 10 and Windows 11', but it seems to be out of date. It says to right-click on the icon and click on `Unpin from taskbar', but there is no such item in the right-click menu any more.
I know that it became difficult to unpin the Firefox icon about a year ago. I got a new PC recently and installed Firefox, but I could not remove the icon. Then realised that I should have done this during installation, by using 'Custom installation' and unticking the 'Icon on taskbar' option. I searched the web for clues and found none, so I uninstalled and reinstalled, which was a nuisance.
Some months later, I have just installed the new version 110.0.1, but I forgot to use 'Custom install', with the result that the icon is back on the taskbar. Again I have searched the web, and again no success. I tried reinstalling V110.0.1 on top, using 'custom install' this time --- I could switch off the 'Icon on taskbar', but the icon is still there.
I don't want to uninstall-reinstall this time because I have now configured Firefox as I want it, so that would waste a lot of time --- and I will probably forget again sometime in the future.
I am sure that Firefox has not done this deliberately, because they are always so much on the user's side.
QUESTION: How do I unpin the Firefox icon from the taskbar without uninstalling? I have an idea that there is a registry hack that will achieve this.
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What happens if you shift+right click on the Firefox taskbar icon? That can sometimes reveal more options?
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What happens if you shift+right click on the Firefox taskbar icon? That can sometimes reveal more options?
Thank you, @TechHorse. Your Shift+RightClick has solved the problem. It was a bit complicated, however.
- Shift+RightClick on the Firefox icon -> Delete -> Nothing happened
- LeftClick on the icon -> `Item not found. This is no longer located at
C:\Users\<username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\Taskbar. Verify the item and try again. '
- (In fact, the directory is empty, presumably because I have no pinned items on the Taskbar.)
- Try again --- Same result
- RightClick on icon -> a single item 'Firefox' came up.
- Shift+RightClick on this second 'Firefox' -> Invitation to delete the item -> Yes
- . . . and now the original Firefox icon is gone.
(I hope I remembered all the details correctly here.)
This second Firefox icon had already come up a minute or so earlier, and Shift+RightClick then yielded a menu that included the item 'Delete', which at that stage did nothing.
It all looks very dodgy, as if things are not working at all as intended --- whatever that intention was. I hope that Mozilla can sort it out and make this icon the same as all other software taskbar icons, which can be quickly deleted by RightClick -> Unpin.
But you have saved me from uninstall-reinstall, and I will remember the Shift+RightClick trick. Thanks very much.
bill292, I think that sometimes it can just take a while for changes made to the taskbar to take visible effect?
So you deleted the Firefox icon, and this actually happened as the icon was no longer found in the quick launch Pinned items folder, but the taskbar UI hadn't yet refreshed to remove the icon from view?
So a suggestion might be that if you unpin or delete an icon from the taskbar in the future, yet nothing appears to happen and the icon stays present, then try restarting your computer first to see if that resolves the matter by forcing the taskbar to refresh its appearence?
Well anyway, glad the matter has been resolved!
Could the Firefox developers please sort this out. Every other program that I install allows its icon to be unpinned from the Start Menu by a simple right-click —> Unpin. Yesterday, I too forgot to choose Customise —> Do Not Pin when installing the latest version 114.0.1, and I searched for quite a while before I found this thread.
There are so many little tricks one has to remember with Windows 11 — one less trick to remember would be very welcome.
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For the record, it was not straightforward. Here are the steps that I used:
- Shift+Right-click (I did not know this trick) —> Unpin. But the icon was still there.
- C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\Taskbar. and delete the Firefox icon file (again, I did not know this trick). But the icon was still there.
- Click on the icon, and accept the invitation to remove it.
Thanks, Firefox, for all your hard and effective work over so many years. This is just one more detail.