Action Center Icon Shows Quiet Hours Turned On

Hi Laurel,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community.

The icon which is there on the right side of Taskbar I.e. Notification icon. Quiet hours will basically mute all notifications while it's on. It runs on an automatic clock but I can't find the settings for quiet hours.

The circle indicates whether all the notifications are read and the transparent/background indicates whether there are still undeleted notifications (read or unread), or vice versa.

If you don't want any notifications on the Taskbar, you can disable it by going into notifications and actions in the settings and check if it helps.

Thanks.

Anil:

I thank you for your response. Please let me try to describe the problem better.

On my system, the Action Center icon does not show a circle in the bottom right corner when Quiet Hours is turned off (see picture 1) and the Action Center icon shows a circle in the bottom right corner when Quiet Hours is turned on (see picture 2).

However, sometimes after I start or restart my PC, the Action Center icon shows a circle in the bottom right corner even though Quiet Hours are not turned on (see picture 3). 

So, in picture 3, why is the circle showing when my Quiet Hours is turned off?

Microsoft Personnel:

After many-many-many hours of trying this and trying that to figure out why my PC Windows 10 Action Center Icon in the task bar had the little circle in the bottom right corner signifying that Quiet Hours was on even though the Quiet Hours box showed it was off, and trying to figure out why my system would sometimes change the Action Center icon by itself and remove the little circle, I finally came up with something.

If I plug in a USB drive, left click the “Show Hidden Icons” arrow in the bottom right of the task bar, then right click the hidden icon for Windows Explorer to “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media”, and left click “Eject USB Flash Memory”, Windows displays a notification that it is “Safe to Remove Hardware”, the Action Center icon turns white, and finally the Action Center icon goes back to normal without the little circle in it after the notification message is finished.

So, it seems like Windows 10 has a bug that turns the little circle in the Action Center icon on by mistake when I start up my system and the first notification message turns the circle off and puts the Action Center icon back to normal where it should be.

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Update as of 03/05/16: It now appears this problem might be solved after the latest release of Windows 10 version 1511 Build 10586.122. My PC has not had the problem since then and every time I start or restart my PC the Notification Icon shows Quiet Hours turned off.

Update as of 05/09/16: IT IS BACK. The same problem is showing up again after Windows 10 version 1511 Build 10586.218.

Your are right.

I saw most of my friends' PC have this problems, too. And I believe this is a bug.

Though this will not affect using Windows, it feels uncomfortable...

The Action Center (Notification) icon continues to show random different symbols after a cold start or a restart even though there are no new notifications waiting. Sometimes the Action Center icon appears as the regular transparent square with lines in it, sometimes the transparent icon with lines in it appears with the circle in the bottom right corner.

This randomness even happens when I start in Safe Mode.

1. If the transparent Action Center icon shows up with the circle in the bottom right corner, I can turn it back to the regular square by right-clicking on the icon and selecting "Turn on quiet hours" and then right-clicking again and selecting "Turn off quiet hours". This is only good for the current session. After another start or restart, anything goes with the icon.

2. A second way to get rid of the circle in the bottom right corner is to cause some kind of notification. If I plug in a USB drive, left click the “Show Hidden Icons” arrow in the bottom right of the task bar, then right click the hidden icon for Windows Explorer to “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media”, and left click “Eject USB Flash Memory”, Windows displays a notification that it is “Safe to Remove Hardware”, the Action Center icon turns white, and finally the Action Center icon goes back to normal transparent square without the little circle in it after the notification message is finished.

3. A third way to get rid of the circle in the bottom right corner is to left-click on the Action Center icon, click on All Settings / System / Notification and actions, turn off the Show app notifications slide and then turn it back on.

I have noticed that when the Action Center icon changes on its own accord to one with the circle in the bottom right corner, it starts out as the regular transparent square icon when the date and time are shown in the system tray, and then changes to the one with the circle on the bottom right corner when Windows 10 is populating the other System Icons such as Volume and Network in the system tray. 

The circle in the bottom right corner of the Action Center icon seems to come on and go off randomly for various reasons (as noted above) and I can't find anything definitive on any MS web site that clearly states exactly what that circle means and what causes it to appear. Would someone from MS or this forum please provide an explanation about what the circle represents and what causes it to appear?

After installing the Windows 10 Anniversary Update version 1607, I no longer have this problem with the Action Center Icon showing the circle in the bottom right corner. 

What does this icon mean? Any help?

Hi George,

Regarding your concern, the icon that you're referring to is a Microsoft social media site. To know more about this, click this link.

Let us know if you have any other concerns.