Hiding *all* taskbar icons on Windows 8.1?

[geoffc]

Hi all,

I'm having trouble working out the problem here, but I assume I'm either not doing this right or I'm trying to do something that's impossible. Any help would be fantastic!

On startup, I run two video windows that sit permanently on my second monitor (camera feeds around the house). As these are for viewing only (require no interaction, and are pretty much a desktop fixture) I'm running these without borders or controls via a batch file that includes the following:

start "" "vlc.exe" --no-video-deco --no-embedded-video --video-x=-1080 --video-y=1156 http://[video1] --zoom=.7 --qt-start-minimized
start "" "vlc.exe" --no-video-deco --no-embedded-video --video-x=-447 --video-y=1156 http://[video2] --zoom=.7 --qt-start-minimized

This works great and minimises the 'extra' VLC window that pops up (the one that doesn't actually have the video in it), and correctly relegates its icon to the system tray. The problem I'm having is that the taskbar icons for the *actual* video windows remain in the taskbar, and I'm not having much luck doing anything about this. Ideally I'd like to have these excluded from the taskbar and alt+tab menus (i.e. the behaviour I get when I set these videos to be the wallpaper).

I did think briefly last night that I had it working as I'd hoped on the primary monitor, and was wondering if the issue I'm having is somehow related to me trying to do this on a secondary display, but trying again today I don't seem to be able to replicate the behaviour. I'm thinking this means I may well have been confused as it was extremely late at the time...

So far I've tried:
* hiding the icon with third party apps (if they can see the video window at all, they insist on hiding the video itself as well as the taskbar button)
* trying a range of other command line solutions (nothing seemed to make a difference)
* googling for hours to see if anything turned up (either I'm the first person on the planet to try this, or I just don't know what to search for)

Note: the other option I'd thought about was using the video wallpaper feature, but setting it to only replace a specified portion of the wallpaper, given that in total my two camera feeds are only set to take ~20% of the screen).

So I guess in short, my questions are:
* Is there a way to get rid of *all* taskbar/alt+tab entries for the video panes themselves? and/or
* is there a way to use the wallpaper functionality to achieve something similar to what I'm going for here?

If helpful, I've included a picture to show what I'm trying to do. See https://www.dropbox.com/s/x6tic71dtnon1 ... estion.jpg.

[Katreil]

Hey everyone,

Also having this same issue and cannot find any solutions after trawling the forums for hours.

I'm looking to achieve the same thing using:

"C:\filepath\vlc.exe" --no-video-deco --no-embedded-video --no-video-title "C:\Video.avi" --video-x=2825 --video-y=325 --qt-start-minimized --width=384 --height=216

Unfortunately as far as I am aware due to "no-embeded video" another taskbar icon is created for the video (as the controls are separated) and can not be hidden.

Finding a way to strip the UI without using "no-embedded-video" or removing both icons would be excellent solutions.