How to Add Recycle Bin Icon to Windows 7 Taskbar

If Windows 7 is in your use for some time now, you might have noticed that it does not allow you to pin icons directly on to the taskbar. For instance, if you have tried dragging and placing ‘Recycle Bin‘ on the taskbar, you probably might have noticed that it gets pinned under the Windows Explorer rather than appearing as a separate icon on the taskbar as it normally would appear in Windows Vista orWindows XP.

In order to place a ‘Recycle Bin’ you’ll need to tweak it a little bit. The idea is very simple; create a shortcut and point it to the original Recycle Bin and then place that created shortcut onto the taskbar. Now the question is how are we going to point a shortcut to the original Recycle Bin folder? Simple; add a small snippet (code) to it.

This is what you will have to do to place an icon on to the taskbar;

Step #1. Right-Click on the desktop and go to New->Shortcut (its the second option from above);

Step #2. Now add the following line in the item box;

%SystemRoot%\explorer.exe shell:RecycleBinFolder

Step #3. Hit Next, type a new name, in this case; Recycle bin and hit Enter;

Once the new icon is created, you’ll notice that it does not have the right icon image. In order to counter this problem, Right click on the icon, select Properties from the menu,

Step #4. A new pop-up window will now appear, click on the ‘change icon‘ button (as shown below) and hit Enter;

Step #5. A small window will pop out, type the following code inside the item box;

%SystemRoot%\system32\imageres.dll

Step #6. Now look for the appropriate Recycle bin icon, once you have found it, select and hit OK. Reference screenshot below;

The last step is to drag and drop the newly created icon onto the taskbar. You can then delete the original icon if you want to. Told you it was simple! Image Courtesy: TweakWin7