Notification Area Icon of Windows 8 are at the extreme right corner of the Windows 8 Taskbar . Apart from various other features the Taskbar of Windows 8 provides, it also provides configurable Notification Area. The Icons in Notification Area contain System Tray Icons and most of the time they do provide information tooltip and a content menu. By default Windows 8 adds System Tray icons like Speaker Icon, Network Icon, Icon indicating PC issues, etc. Many applications add icons to System tray so as to save the space in Taskbar. The configuration of the Notification Area Icons in Windows 8 can be done using Taskbar Properties as displayed below.
You can even launch the Notification Area Icon configuration Settings using Windows 8 search functionality. Just press Windows Key + Q and Search for Notification Area and click on the Settings as displayed in the screenshot below.
Both methods described above will open up a Control Panel Applet to configure Notification Area Icons. There are many configurable settings for the Notification Area as displayed in the screenshot below. In case you do not run many applications simultaneously, you can check the option to display all System Tray Icons so that you can visually see what applications are running and you can launch them easily.
Look closely at the above screenshot and notice that the checkbox Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar is checked. Once this option is enabled, you will be able to view all the System Tray Icons of Windows 8 and interact with them using Right Click on any of the System Tray Icon. In case you do run lots of applications which create lots of icons in the Notification Area, you can uncheck the option to show all the icons and selectively choose which icon and notification you wish to see.