If you leave the system idle for more than a few minutes, it will shrink itself down to an icon on your task bar. This is a security feature to prevent unauthorised access in the event you’ve been called away from your computer. It’s referred to as hiding.

You can also tell it to hide immediately by pressing the File|Suspend to an icon item in the top menu bar.

 

 

To restore it after hiding, press on its icon on the task bar.

suspend

A re-login panel will appear like this:

relogin

Notice your user ID is already filled in. Re-enter your password and press OK. The desktop will be restored to the same as you left it. If instead of pressing OK, you press Exit, you will be logged-out and the system will shut-down. You can also re-log in as a different user by entering a new user ID and password. In this case, the current user will be logged-out and you will be logged-in in their place.

You can control the idle time limit before it hides with a personalised default. You will be shown how to change your defaults in a moment.

Note: If you leave it idle long enough, an hour or so, it will fully log you out and shut-down.