Icons disappearing on taskbar

So just the last day or so, all my icons keep disappearing from the task bar. All I'm left with is the blue start icon and the search icon, then an empty bar up to the small taskbar icons on the right. Now if I restart, they come back again - but sometimes I'm in the middle of doing something and don't want to restart! Any ideas why this is suddenly happening?

Windows 11 22H2
22621.1413

Does this help. Disappearing Icons on Task Bar

Thanks. I'm not using an addon start menu or anything. I reset file explorer and that brought them back without needing to restart. Would like to know why they keep disappearing though. This laptop is quite new (to me) - not a lot on it! So not a lot to go wrong.

Maybe an update is causing it. Check to see if there are any updates around the time this started happening.

I wondered that - it's only been since the last big Windows update. Seems fine today though! It's bizarre it'll just go intermittently.

There are definitely spooks in windows. You may need to perform an exorcism.

Well since I did the reset file explorere thing, it hasn't done it since - yet.