IE8: Hide the Favorites Bar
Contributed by Rob Rogers 
Tagged: Browsers If you’re like me, you do not rely on the Favorites Bar in Internet Explorer for navigating to your bookmarked pages. If it is left enabled, you end up dedicating an entire row of your toolbar for the Favorites and Add to Favorites buttons. Follow these steps to hide the Favorites Bar and return the Favorites and Add to Favorites to their IE7 positions.
By default, IE8 has the Favorites Bar enabled:
To hide the Favorites Bar:
1. Right-click on an empty space in the IE toolbar.
2. When the context menu appears, select Favorites Bar to remove the checkmark.
The Favorites Bar will be hidden and the Favorites and Add to Favorites buttons will be moved to the same position they occupied in IE7:
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Michael said on March 22, 2009
I already have the Favorites Bar and Command Bar hidden.
I am now left with an entire row consisting of solely the Favorites Button.
The Add to Favorites Button is already hidden since it is part of the Favorites Bar.
Since I don’t use Tabs this row is just taking up space.
I had this row hidden in Internet Explorer 7.
Does anyone know the registry edit to fix this?
Thanks.
Enid said on March 26, 2009
Thank you very much. That was a problem for me. With ie8 I am experiencing scrolling down a page without wanting to. i.e. I try to highlight a link and can’t get to it as the page keeps scrolling down to the end. Do you have a fix for this?
Steve said on April 9, 2009
But is there any way to remove the Favorites button altogether?
William G said on April 25, 2009
The IE8 development team at Microsoft seemingly refuses to acknowledge that someone might actually *not* find the ‘Favorites’ button to be the best thing since Sliced Bread™. You’re stuck with it, whether you ever need it or not.
Theresa said on April 29, 2009
Thank you for this information! I hate the favorites bar!
tim evans said on May 29, 2009
This does not help. I stil have the favorites button, and as someone else said, an entire row dedicated to it. I may as well turn favorites bar back on, as this row does nothing for me.
Ben said on June 14, 2009
Tim, If you drag the Favorites button (with “Lock the Toolbars” unchecked) down onto the Tab bar before you uncheck the Favorites bar, it will stay in the Tab bar after you uncheck the Favorites bar, saving you an entire row. Complete removal of the Favorites button (without also removing the Tab bar) is still the unsolved problem.
Robbo said on June 28, 2009
Favorites Bar gone but no add to favorites button has appeared
Woody said on July 1, 2009
I can’t get rid of it either…….. It stays stuck behind my tabs. It is in my way and I don’t like it.
Fred Gregg said on August 1, 2009
When I right-click on a blank spot on the tool bar, the Favorites Bar is not checked yet “Favorites Bar” is present below “Favorites” when I click on Favorites on the tool bar. And when I expand “Favorites”, “Favorites Bar” appears at the bottom of the list. When I expand “Favorites Bar”, the page is blank. If I delete the “Favorites Bar”, it comes right back when I reopen the IE8. Can I perminately get rid of this “Favorites Bar” and how?
Anonymous said on August 5, 2009
On a related issue, does anyone know is it possible to just add favourties to favourites and not to the favourites bar?
I liked the old Links way of doing things – it meant you could have a quick link to a few key urls without having dig around in favourites. Now ever time I add a favourite I have to delete it from the favourites bar which is crazy as I add several a day!
Joe said on September 2, 2009
That trick doesn’t work! Anybody have an answer???
bob said on December 2, 2009
there is a registry hack to remove the favorites bar… it is hard to find… I will try to find the instructions again and post
Godoggies said on June 10, 2010
This is what I found (WARNING- you are on your own by using this.)
————————————————————————————————————————-
There is an easy way to get rid of that wasted space with a simple registry entry. That Favorites Button and blue bar was driving me nuts.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftInternet ExplorerToolbarsRestrictions]
In My case I had to create a new key entry tiled “Toolbars” and under that “Restrictions”. Once you have those just click on Restrictions and create new dword which will look like this “NoCommandBar”=dword:00000001″ without the quotes.
This has worked for me but I am not responsible if you screw things up. I have attached the screenshots so you can see for yourself
Anonymous said on June 10, 2010
The tutorial as described above does work exactly as described. You are left with the favorites button but it shares a small amount of the real estate as the tabs.
Removing the favorites button is possible through registry hacks but gives you little additional real estate.
Michael said on June 13, 2010
Had to add a new Key for Internet Explorer, Toolbars and Restrictions and then a new DWORD for NoCommandBar with a modified value of 1.
It works but then you lose the ability to view your History.
Jdalduncan said on January 2, 2011
Is there any way to hide the Tabs toolbar? It really does take up a lot of space on my screen and I constantly have to scroll down to see my entire webpage
Maximus said on January 7, 2012
While I’ve never been able to make the Favorite Button disappear, I was able to make it move off of the Favorites Tool Bar using a registry tweak.
Go to :
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\CommandBar]
In the key “FavBandRow” change the value to “3″ and the Favorites Button will move off the Favories Bar and up to the Bar directly above.
This then leaves more room on the Favorties Bar itself for more favorites.