ZenHide automatically hides your mouse cursor and desktop icons when you’re idle, or on a hotkey. Show off your wallpaper when you step away, or keep the cursor out of the way while you play.
Click the image to watch the showcase.
- Auto-hide when idle: hides the cursor and desktop icons after a set idle time, and shows them again when you move the mouse
- Real-movement mode: ignores apps and games that move the cursor on their own
- Stays out of your way: icons don't hide while you're typing or renaming a desktop item
- Hotkey: hide or show on demand (default
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H), with an optional "stay hidden" mode - Taskbar fix: re-hides an auto-hide taskbar that Windows leaves open (multi-monitor aware)
- Tray icon: double-click it, or right-click and choose Settings
- Start with Windows: optional, with or without admin rights
Grab ZenHide.exe from the latest release and run it. No install needed.
Prefer to run the source? Download it, install AutoHotkey v1.1 and run ZenHide.ahk.
On first run it asks whether to start with Windows and whether to show the tray icon, then creates its settings in Core\config\ZenHide.ini next to the program. Put it in its own folder.
Double-click the tray icon, or right-click it and choose Settings. Changes apply when you save (the program restarts itself).
You can also edit Core\config\ZenHide.ini directly. Each setting has a comment explaining it, but this needs a manual restart (tray menu, Restart).
| Section | What it controls |
|---|---|
| General | Start with Windows, tray icon |
| Idle | What to hide, and after how long |
| Taskbar Fix | Re-hide a stuck auto-hide taskbar |
| Hotkeys | Hide/show hotkey, stay-hidden mode |
| Advanced | Admin startup, check intervals |
- Taskbar fix: it only makes sense if Windows' "Automatically hide the taskbar" setting is on. If you don't use auto-hide, turn the fix off in Settings, because it moves the mouse away from the taskbar to make it hide.
- Taskbars docked to the top, left or right may not always re-hide (a Windows quirk).
- Antivirus tools sometimes flag compiled AutoHotkey programs. The full source code is here to check.