What is the People Icon?
Windows 10 includes a feature called “My People,” represented by a small icon showing two human silhouettes on the right side of your Taskbar, near the system clock. Microsoft designed this to be a hub where you could pin your favorite contacts and quickly send them Skype messages or emails without opening dedicated applications.
In reality, very few people actually use this feature. The integration is limited to a small handful of Microsoft apps, and if you use third-party tools like Discord, Slack, or WhatsApp to communicate with your friends and coworkers, the My People hub is entirely useless. It sits on your Taskbar doing nothing but taking up valuable screen real estate. You can easily remove it to clean up your workspace.
How to Remove the People Icon from the Taskbar
You can turn off the My People feature directly by right-clicking the Taskbar.
- Look at the bottom of your screen where your Taskbar is located.
- Find an empty, blank space on the Taskbar (away from your pinned apps and the system tray icons).
- Right-click on the empty space. A tall context menu will appear.
- Look up the menu for the option labelled Show People on the taskbar. It will likely have a small checkmark next to it.
- Click on “Show People on the taskbar” to uncheck it.
The icon will instantly vanish. If you ever want to access the deeper settings for this feature (or if the right-click method didn’t work), you can also go to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar, scroll down to the “People” section, and toggle the “Show contacts on the taskbar” switch to Off.