AOMEI Partition Assistant
How to Remove Shortcuts from Desktop on Windows PC
In this article, you’ll learn how to delete desktop shortcuts in 2 ways. And this article will also show you how to recover accidentally/permanently deleted directories.
By Lucas / Updated on May 12, 2023
When you have too many apps installed on your computer, your desktop is probably cluttered with shortcuts. These are shortcut icons that do not contain any data of their own but allow you to swiftly navigate to other programs or files.
Many users may want a tidy screen so they are likely to remove shortcuts from desktops to keep them organized. If you also wish to remove some useless shortcuts, then this post will help you. And to avoid you delete important files, we’ll also show you how to recover deleted files from your PC.
2 ways how to remove shortcuts from desktop
Note: If you are unable to remove a desktop shortcut, it is possible that the program was built with administrator credentials. As an administrator, you must erase desktop icons.
Way 1. Delete shortcut from desktop directly
Step 1. On your desktop, right-click on your selected shortcut icon.
Step 2. To delete shortcuts, choose "Delete" from the drop-down menu. You may also just drag the icon to the Recycle Bin.
Way 2. Remove shortcut from desktop in Settings
You can also set shortcuts in Settings under Personalization.
Step 1. Press “Win + I” to open Windows Settings and click the “Personalization” button.
Step 2. Select the “Themes” option in the left menu.
Step 3. Click “Desktop icon settings” and find your Recycle Bin icon.
Step 4. In this case, untick the "Recycle Bin" icon, and click “Apply”. Remember to click “OK” to close the window.
On the other hand, if the Computer and Recycle Bin icons have vanished from your desktop, you may restore them by checking the respective boxes.
How to recover deleted shortcuts and files from desktop
If you regret deleting some shortcuts because you can’t quickly access frequently used applications/folders, or you find that there are some important files or shortcuts that are removed by mistake, you can check your Recycle Bin to restore them.
However, if your desired files are not found in the Recycle Bin, don't panic; you may try to restore these files using expert data recovery software.
We propose AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, a disk and partition management solution for Windows users to monitor their computers easily. Its "Recover Data" feature can recover more than 200 different types of data. Whether deleted or lost Word documents, Excel, photographs, videos, PPT, or PDF, they will be restored from HDD, USB, and other storage devices once scanned.
Step 1. Install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, and click Recover > Recover Data.
Step 2. Select the source drive where the Word document was saved > Start Scanning.
Step 3. When the scan is over, all deleted files, Recycle Bin, and other lost files will be listed. Please select the data you want to recover and click Recover.
Step 4. Please select a path to save recovered documents.
Step 5. The recovery progress will start and data will be saved to the path if it is successful.
1. This tool can also recover missing partitions.
2. If the files can’t open on desktop, you might change some settings of mouse or folder options.
Final lines
The preceding two sections explain how to remove shortcuts from the desktop and how to restore lost shortcuts and files. Hope this post may assist you in resolving the issue. Some users may meet files missing or folders can’t access after Windows update, AOMEI Partition Assistant can also give you a hand.
As an all-around disk manager, this tool can clone disk, migrate OS, convert the disk to MBR/GPT without data loss, and move installed apps,… You can always find helpful functions in this software. And it has the Server Edition to help Windows Serve users efficiently manage Server PCs.
