But if you’ve set the Taskbar settings to show small icons only, then you won’t see the option for the search box until you turn that setting off (right-click in the task bar, select Taskbar Settings, then turn Use small taskbar buttons off).

You can restore the search box the same way, if you want it back. You can hide it altogether if you want to. Repeat Step 1, but this time go to Search > Show Search Icon to reduce the search box to a magnifying glass icon. I got rid of the Cortana and Task View buttons. You may have to repeat these steps for each one you want to remove/add.

The active items have a check mark next to them-click the ones you don’t want.

Right-click in any blank space in the task bar (or in the search box itself).

In case that video ever goes missing, here’s what to do: I wanted to reduce the size of the search box and found this very short YouTube video that shows you how: But you can give those title bars some color with this quick trick. This is a big change from Windows 8, which allowed you to pick any color you wanted. I have a lot of icons on my taskbar, so when I started using Windows 10, I got frustrated with the amount of space taken up by things I didn’t want, like the Cortana icon, the Task View button, and the big search box. Windows 10 uses white window title bars by default.

Windows 10 search bar white