Can I hide the smiley in Visual Studio 2015 final?

Question

In Visual Studio 2015 RC, there was that Feedback smiley in the upper right of the main window.

Unfortunately, it is still there in the final release of Visual Studio 2015:

I've searched all through the options and settings and found no way to hide this smiley.

My question:

Any option or other (Registry etc.) hack to remove the smiley?

Update 2015-12-01:

Yesterday Update 1 for Visual Studio was released.

While I still find no option to hide the smiley, they at least provided a less distracting icon for it:

Answer 1

Edit:

Visual Studio 2015 Update 1 changes the feedback icon to an understated black and white one so no more smiley! It's not mentioned in the release notes.

Original answer:

As in OPs answer, this icon is specified in this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0_Config\MainWindowFrameControls{F66FBC48-9AE4-41DC-B1AF-0D64F0F54A07}

if you delete the key, Visual Studio recreates it, but if you invalidate the "Package" value of the registry key and restart Visual Studio then the smiley icon is gone:

However, when you install a Visual Studio update (eg SSDT, Resharper) the installer restores the package value, and the smiley is back. So I have created a registry file like this to run when the smiley reappears:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0_Config\MainWindowFrameControls\{F66FBC48-9AE4-41DC-B1AF-0D64F0F54A07}]
@="Feedback Button"
"Package"="{00000000-AA51-43B1-97EE-509A33B681F3}"
"DisplayName"="#1001"
"ViewFactory"="{060EAB95-139E-407D-BEDC-CC2B7A9B39D4}"
"ViewId"=dword:00000064
"Alignment"="TitleBarRight"
"Sort"=dword:00000064
"FullScreenAlignment"="MenuBarRight"
"FullScreenSort"=dword:00000064

This doesn't seem to affect startup time or stability, but there are no guarantees, registry changes are bad mmm, etc.

Answer 2

Thanks to Jehof's hint for Visual Studio 2013, I was able to resolve this:

Deleting the following Registry key actually helped.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0_Config\MainWindowFrameControls\{F66FBC48-9AE4-41DC-B1AF-0D64F0F54A07}

(Please note the 14.0 instead of the 12.0 in the linked blog post)

After restarting Visual Studio, the Feedback button is now gone.

Update one day later

Suddenly the Feedback icon is here again. And the registry key is here again, too.

How on earth can this happen?

Seems the smiley resurrected from its grave. I'm really frightened now…

Answer 3

Following the advice in this thread, I modified also the registry key and it worked at first, but VS2015 keeps recreating the key to its original value after a while.

To remedy that, I added a VS2015 shortcut in Taskbar, and then Shift+Right Click to access 'Properties'. Replace the Target path of the shortcut pointing to devenv.exe with a own local c:\tools\vs.bat file.

Additionally, I changed Run to 'Minimized' in the shortcut properties. The vs.bat looks as follows:

@echo off
reg ADD HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\14.0_Config\MainWindowFrameControls\{F66FBC48-9AE4-41DC-B1AF-0D64F0F54A07} /v Package /t REG_SZ /d {00000000-AA51-43B1-97EE-509A33B681F3} /f 2> nul
start /B devenv.exe

This ensures the key is overwritten every time I start VS2015 via Taskbar shourtcut. I found this to be reliably working for me.

If you ever start VS without this (e.g., on a VS restart), you may need to run the above twice.