Every time I would reboot my Windows 10 computer, the Microsoft Xbox app would reappear on my taskbar. I could unpin the x-box app and it would go away, but as soon as I reboot the computer, the xbox app repinned itself and showed back up.
I spent a long time trouble shooting user profiles and looking in the registry but could not find a solution that stopped the xbox app from reappearing on my windows 10 task bar. Finally I found a solution.
Open Explorer and navigate to:
- C:\Users\your-username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\
(if windows is installed on a different drive, replace the C: with that drive.) - Open the file in Edit mode (right click and edit) Layoutmodification.xml
- Look for this line: <CustomTaskbarLayoutCollection> or <defaultlayout:TaskbarLayout>
(use ctrl-F) - Delete everything between <defaultlayout:TaskbarLayout> and </defaultlayout:TaskbarLayout>
It should be something like <taskbar:TaskbarPinList> through </taskbar:TaskbarPinList>
Reboot!. That should remove the xbox icon from your Windows 10 tray permanently.
It seems that MSI computers and MSI laptops (computers with MSI motherboards) often have this xbox app hard-coded to the taskbar. You'll need to implement the above fix to stop the xbox icon from reappearing on your taskbar after reboot.
