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Create a Shortcut or Hotkey to Turn the Desktop Icons On or Off
If you've got loads of icons cluttering up your desktop, you might want a quick way to turn them off without using the context menu; here's a quick and easy way to make a shortcut key to turn them on or off.

Note: this article was originally written a couple of years ago, but we tested it out on Windows 8, 8.1, and even Windows 10 to verify that it works and figured that we'd update and publish it again.

Create a Shortcut to Toggle the Desktop Icons
The solution comes through a small utility written by one of the Desktop Sidebar programmers (an alternate sidebar with loads of modules). Just so we're clear, this utility does the same thing as a right-click on the desktop and toggling the "Show Desktop Icons" item.