How to hide or make Windows 7 taskbar invisible

There are several different ways to hide the taskbar in Windows 7. One way is to hide the Windows 7 taskbar by choosing the Auto-hide option in Taskbar properties. This will hide the taskbar when the mouse pointer is away from it, and reveal when the pointer is moved towards the hidden taskbar.

The second option is to hide the entire taskbar leaving only the start button, so that you may access the start menu and installed programs. It looks like this:

This can be achieved through a free program called TaskBar Hider. Using a hotkey combination you can hide or show the taskbar quickly. However, this also hides all pinned icons on the taskbar including icons of opened windows and programs. This is something you might not like. So there is a third option.

You can make the taskbar invisible. The start orb, your pinned icons and all opened programs remain visible. The only thing that is hidden is the taskbar.

To achieve the invisible taskbar look, download the Invisible Taskbar theme and unzip the contents to C:WindowsResourcesThemes directory. Then download UXTheme MultiPatcher and patch the UXTheme and associated files by clicking on the 3 patch buttons. After restarting the computer, right click on the desktop and choose Personalize.

Then apply the theme ‘clearaero’.

However, this theme does not make the taskbar completely invisible. You can still make out the taskbar outline from the aero blur it causes. The effectiveness of the theme depends on the background wallpaper. Usually a single colored or plain background works best. Try this out with different wallpapers to see which fits best.

Related:
32 gorgeous Windows 7 themes