Question

Is there a way to hide the Windows taskbar using Python? If not- is there a way to disable or to re-size and lock it using the registry?

Answer 1

Microsoft support document KB186119 demonstrates how to hide the taskbar using Visual Basic. Here’s a ctypes version for Python, but using ShowWindow instead of SetWindowPos:

import ctypes
from ctypes import wintypes

user32 = ctypes.WinDLL("user32")

SW_HIDE = 0
SW_SHOW = 5

user32.FindWindowW.restype = wintypes.HWND
user32.FindWindowW.argtypes = (
    wintypes.LPCWSTR, # lpClassName
    wintypes.LPCWSTR) # lpWindowName

user32.ShowWindow.argtypes = (
    wintypes.HWND, # hWnd
    ctypes.c_int)  # nCmdShow

def hide_taskbar():
    hWnd = user32.FindWindowW(u"Shell_traywnd", None)
    user32.ShowWindow(hWnd, SW_HIDE)

def unhide_taskbar():
    hWnd = user32.FindWindowW(u"Shell_traywnd", None)
    user32.ShowWindow(hWnd, SW_SHOW)