Steam icon disappears from taskbar, Windows 11

[snerft]

I have the problem that the Steam icon disappears from the taskbar. Steam is still running and I can access it by Alt-Tabbing. Steam is also visible on the right side of the taskbar under "hidden icons" and opens its window when I double-click it. But the Steam icon in the taskbar is missing. When I open the friends list, the Steam icon appears in the taskbar. But only the friends list window is there. When I close the friends list, the Steam icon also disappears from the taskbar. But Steam is still running.

The problem has been going on for a few days. I haven't found a permanent solution yet. Restarting does not work in any case.

I found this thread here in the Steam forum, but it was closed recently:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/3203745634153321651/

[Wolfalpino]

Cant' say for others, but in my case (which i just installed 2 versions and formatted on HDD after):

Go to C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar

Right Click on the steam link with not icon and open properties.

Check the letter of the Drive where the link is pointing at.

eventually change it to the letter of the hard drive where you actual Steam is (and correct every other part in case).

It can sound obvious, but i had started the steam exe directly from the new install, and kept having the same result.

This is because it can handle only 1 Steam link in the TaskBar icons folder.

So you need to fix that one, if it's your case too.

[Noddy]

Supafly eredeti hozzászólása:

bonkeymr eredeti hozzászólása:

Hey man, so this might be a dead post, but I had the same problem as you and here is how I fixed it:

Assuming you have Steam pinned, open steam. You should now have the pinned steam icon showing up normally plus the weird blank steam icon that you want to get rid of.

Right-click the blank steam icon and a list of steam locations will pop up.
At the bottom there should be one that just says "Steam," right above the "Pin to Taskbar" option. Right click on that one and go to "Properties."

Okay, now a properties window should open. You'll notice fields named "Target" and "Start in." You'll notice that these have the wrong file path for your steam file.

Put the correct filepath in there for where your steam.exe file is on for the Target field, and then put the filepath for your Steam folder on the Start in field.

That should fix it.


the above is from a forum post in r/steam by the user https://www.reddit.com/user/SagaciousKurama/

and it helped me out and is the correct fix and fixes it at the base level which is if u have reinstalled or because windows is ♥♥♥♥ this happens so the way to fix it would be the above method and it should not occur again for you guys have fun and hope this helps someone.

Or just do the solution posted in post #1

.......no need to necro with a solution when a solution was provided, simple and already worked.

Hey, just wanted to let you know that I tried your solution and it didn't work whilst Bonkeymr's solution did the trick for me.

[FEMBOY]

go to steam app,right click and pin to taskbar,hope i helped u

[Corruptor55]

bonkeymr eredeti hozzászólása:

Hey man, so this might be a dead post, but I had the same problem as you and here is how I fixed it:

Assuming you have Steam pinned, open steam. You should now have the pinned steam icon showing up normally plus the weird blank steam icon that you want to get rid of.

Right-click the blank steam icon and a list of steam locations will pop up.
At the bottom there should be one that just says "Steam," right above the "Pin to Taskbar" option. Right click on that one and go to "Properties."

Okay, now a properties window should open. You'll notice fields named "Target" and "Start in." You'll notice that these have the wrong file path for your steam file.

Put the correct filepath in there for where your steam.exe file is on for the Target field, and then put the filepath for your Steam folder on the Start in field.

That should fix it.


the above is from a forum post in r/steam by the user https://www.reddit.com/user/SagaciousKurama/

and it helped me out and is the correct fix and fixes it at the base level which is if u have reinstalled or because windows is ♥♥♥♥ this happens so the way to fix it would be the above method and it should not occur again for you guys have fun and hope this helps someone.

Dude tysm this fix worked perfectly!

[JoKer]

I ran into the same issue, and I think I found out the cause. When I install steam to my computer, I didn't use the default file path, which should be 'C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam', instead, I installed it to 'D:/Steam/'. When you right click the icon and select properties, you would see the target location was set automatically to C not D. Just reset the file path to whereever you put your steam, the issue should now be fixed

[JoKer]

bonkeymr eredeti hozzászólása:

Hey man, so this might be a dead post, but I had the same problem as you and here is how I fixed it:

Assuming you have Steam pinned, open steam. You should now have the pinned steam icon showing up normally plus the weird blank steam icon that you want to get rid of.

Right-click the blank steam icon and a list of steam locations will pop up.
At the bottom there should be one that just says "Steam," right above the "Pin to Taskbar" option. Right click on that one and go to "Properties."

Okay, now a properties window should open. You'll notice fields named "Target" and "Start in." You'll notice that these have the wrong file path for your steam file.

Put the correct filepath in there for where your steam.exe file is on for the Target field, and then put the filepath for your Steam folder on the Start in field.

That should fix it.


the above is from a forum post in r/steam by the user https://www.reddit.com/user/SagaciousKurama/

and it helped me out and is the correct fix and fixes it at the base level which is if u have reinstalled or because windows is ♥♥♥♥ this happens so the way to fix it would be the above method and it should not occur again for you guys have fun and hope this helps someone.

[Escalprillo]

Supafly eredeti hozzászólása:

bonkeymr eredeti hozzászólása:

Hey man, so this might be a dead post, but I had the same problem as you and here is how I fixed it:

Assuming you have Steam pinned, open steam. You should now have the pinned steam icon showing up normally plus the weird blank steam icon that you want to get rid of.

Right-click the blank steam icon and a list of steam locations will pop up.
At the bottom there should be one that just says "Steam," right above the "Pin to Taskbar" option. Right click on that one and go to "Properties."

Okay, now a properties window should open. You'll notice fields named "Target" and "Start in." You'll notice that these have the wrong file path for your steam file.

Put the correct filepath in there for where your steam.exe file is on for the Target field, and then put the filepath for your Steam folder on the Start in field.

That should fix it.


the above is from a forum post in r/steam by the user https://www.reddit.com/user/SagaciousKurama/

and it helped me out and is the correct fix and fixes it at the base level which is if u have reinstalled or because windows is ♥♥♥♥ this happens so the way to fix it would be the above method and it should not occur again for you guys have fun and hope this helps someone.

Or just do the solution posted in post #1

.......no need to necro with a solution when a solution was provided, simple and already worked.

this worked for me! thanks!

[S20Gaming]

Okay, this might not work for some of you, but you can try its very simple . Start your steam and then right click on the steam icon in the taskbar and then click on the blank steam icon then it will say delete shortcut and you have to click on yes, after that just restart your steam and the problem might fix

[Laurent C.]

Supafly eredeti hozzászólása:

Ashborn eredeti hozzászólása:

Hey man, just wanted to say how much you helped me. I'm not good at IT stuff and it was the only fix that worked for me since the "Solution" on this thread was to unpin it from the taskbar, but mine was never pinned in the first place.

....Last line on original answer

Supafly eredeti hozzászólása:

1. Unpin it from the taskbar
2. Exit Steam or use hidden icons to on friends so it shows again
3. Pin it to Taskbar

If you never had it pinned before do the above but switch step 1 to pin and step 3 to unpin

Yeah your solution did not work for me either, bonkeymr's solution worked.
So it is indeed different solutions for different problems.

The path in my case was wrong in the white icon due to new installation path. The pin/unpin solution did not work, the change path solution worked.

No need to insist that there is only one solution to solve them all, we're not in a book.

[Makarios]

THA | Prison Mike eredeti hozzászólása:

Hey man, so this might be a dead post, but I had the same problem as you and here is how I fixed it:

Assuming you have Steam pinned, open steam. You should now have the pinned steam icon showing up normally plus the weird blank steam icon that you want to get rid of.

Right-click the blank steam icon and a list of steam locations will pop up.
At the bottom there should be one that just says "Steam," right above the "Pin to Taskbar" option. Right click on that one and go to "Properties."

Okay, now a properties window should open. You'll notice fields named "Target" and "Start in." You'll notice that these have the wrong file path for your steam file.

Put the correct filepath in there for where your steam.exe file is on for the Target field, and then put the filepath for your Steam folder on the Start in field.

That should fix it.


the above is from a forum post in r/steam by the user https://www.reddit.com/user/SagaciousKurama/

and it helped me out and is the correct fix and fixes it at the base level which is if u have reinstalled or because windows is ♥♥♥♥ this happens so the way to fix it would be the above method and it should not occur again for you guys have fun and hope this helps someone.

this worked.

[Luger]

THA | Prison Mike eredeti hozzászólása:

Hey man, so this might be a dead post, but I had the same problem as you and here is how I fixed it:

Assuming you have Steam pinned, open steam. You should now have the pinned steam icon showing up normally plus the weird blank steam icon that you want to get rid of.

Right-click the blank steam icon and a list of steam locations will pop up.
At the bottom there should be one that just says "Steam," right above the "Pin to Taskbar" option. Right click on that one and go to "Properties."

Okay, now a properties window should open. You'll notice fields named "Target" and "Start in." You'll notice that these have the wrong file path for your steam file.

Put the correct filepath in there for where your steam.exe file is on for the Target field, and then put the filepath for your Steam folder on the Start in field.

That should fix it.


the above is from a forum post in r/steam by the user https://www.reddit.com/user/SagaciousKurama/

and it helped me out and is the correct fix and fixes it at the base level which is if u have reinstalled or because windows is ♥♥♥♥ this happens so the way to fix it would be the above method and it should not occur again for you guys have fun and hope this helps someone.

This one worked, thanks

[Edmar Thorn]

THA | Prison Mike eredeti hozzászólása:

Hey man, so this might be a dead post, but I had the same problem as you and here is how I fixed it:

Assuming you have Steam pinned, open steam. You should now have the pinned steam icon showing up normally plus the weird blank steam icon that you want to get rid of.

Right-click the blank steam icon and a list of steam locations will pop up.
At the bottom there should be one that just says "Steam," right above the "Pin to Taskbar" option. Right click on that one and go to "Properties."

Okay, now a properties window should open. You'll notice fields named "Target" and "Start in." You'll notice that these have the wrong file path for your steam file.

Put the correct filepath in there for where your steam.exe file is on for the Target field, and then put the filepath for your Steam folder on the Start in field.

That should fix it.


the above is from a forum post in r/steam by the user https://www.reddit.com/user/SagaciousKurama/

and it helped me out and is the correct fix and fixes it at the base level which is if u have reinstalled or because windows is ♥♥♥♥ this happens so the way to fix it would be the above method and it should not occur again for you guys have fun and hope this helps someone.

Can confirm this still works <3

[Vixen.gif]

RiO eredeti hozzászólása:

What Supafly said.

It's hard to explain the why - but to give you a simplified explanation: it's has to do with how Steam consists of multiple processes and the way it handles those. In some cases it ends up confusing Windows about which one(s) supply handles that connect to the task bar.

Unpinning Steam from the taskbar; exiting and restarting it; and then re-pinning it; is you explicitly telling Windows: "No, this one!"

To be clear: this isn't a bug on Microsoft's end. This is purely Valve doing something weird and not-quite-supported.

So uh...I've tried this. Multiple times. I've even uninstalled/reinstalled Steam. It STILL keeps doing it, and it gives me a path error but still opens steam when I double click.

[Scyto]

none of these worked for me

what worked:

1. start steam
2. right click the broken icon in the task bar
3. a menu will pop up - now right click the word steam (it has same broken icon)
4. this will bring up a file properties dialog for steam properties
5. make sure the target is correct, mine wasn't - for example d:\steam\steam.exe (wherever your steam.exe is)
6. make sure the start-in entry is the steam directory where steam.exe is (not the exe itself) for example d:\steam
7. as soon as you click OK the icon will be fixed

[Steve]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.