Sysinternals Process Explorer: do not hide system tray icon on updates

iraklio 20 Reputation points
2026-10-14T20:00:55.66+00:00

Summary: Even if setting Process Explorer to not have its icon hidden in the Task Bar, after a Process Explorer update, the icon gets hidden again.

Repro:

Settings | Personalization | Taskbar | Other system tray icons:

  • select "Sysinternals Process Explorer" and "switch it to on" in order for the icon not to be hidden

At this point the ProcExp tray icon shows fine.

After updating ProcExp to a new version, it goes back to being a hidden icon, the steps above need to be repeated every time Process Explorer is updated.

AFAIK, this is the only tool/program that has this behavior, that the icon hides itself after an update.

Is there any setting or steps I can do to keep the Process Explorer icon always in front?

If not, could you please check if this could be solved, to keep the icon "un-hidden" after updates?

Sysinternals
Sysinternals

Advanced system utilities to manage, troubleshoot, and diagnose Windows and Linux systems and applications.

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Answer accepted by question author

AI answer

2026-10-14T20:01:07.4966667+00:00

Windows treats updated tray apps as new executables, so the visibility choice for the tray icon can reset after each update. There is currently no official setting to make that preference persist across app updates.

A documented explanation for similar cases is that the stored tray icon setting points to the old executable path after the app updates. When the app installs to a new versioned path, Windows sees it as a different executable and hides the icon again.

For Process Explorer, that means there is no supported built-in way shown here to keep the icon permanently unhidden across updates. The available options are:

  1. Turn the icon back on after each update in Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Other system tray icons.
  2. If available in the hidden tray area, drag the icon from the hidden menu to the taskbar as a quicker manual workaround.

No product-side fix or persistent Windows setting is described here for this behavior.

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