Enhance tray icons control

[Cmixed]

Description of the new feature / enhancement

Enhance tray icons control mainly contains three parts.

1. Powertoys can provide small menu to better access tray icons (can be called by a shortcut key).
2. Powertoys is able not to show its own tray icon.
3. Powertoys is able to control other apps' tray icons status (show or not to show).

Scenario when this would be used?

Many apps have its tray icon. However sometimes using shortcut keys is enough.
Or due to various reasons, the tray icon may not be very useful.
In these cases, having too many tray icons will only add to the frustration.
(Especially on a laptop, when you have opened a bunch of applications.)

Supporting information

The tray icon:

Some apps can chose not show its tray icon:

// By the way I find some issues are similar to some of my issue. (In my opinion)
// However it is not very clear and not be implemented.
// So I creat this issue and enhanced it.

Finally thanks to all of you.

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Please view the issues below to see if they solve your problem, and if the issue describes your problem please consider closing this one and thumbs upping the other issue to help us prioritize it. Thank you!

Closed similar issues:

• Settings option to hide tray icon (PowerToys and PowerToys Awake) (#13880), similarity score: 0.76
• About the system tray (#24005), similarity score: 0.76
• Hide from icon tray (#15839), similarity score: 0.75

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[Cmixed]

Although two small suggestions regarding this issue have been mentioned multiple times, they have still not been implemented.

In the meantime, this request "Powertoys can provide small menu to better access tray icons (can be called by a shortcut key)." is useful. I hope it can be achieved.

Thanks.

[Jay-o-Way]

Hello and thanks for your message. Quick first thoughts:

1. What do you mean exactly where? Which icons? If you want to keep icons but save space, you can move icons to the overflow menu
   

2. Sounds like an idea, but...

3. Go to Windows Settings for the task bar and you can control this exactly.

So 2 and 3 are ❌

[Cmixed]

Thanks for your reply！

Perhaps due to my wording, you did not understand what I mean. So I want to give a more detailed explanation for my issue.(Oh my god it's really a little lot, but thanks for your patience)

Well, although I know I can move icons to the overflow menu. But moving tray icons to the overflow menu doesn't slove the problem. Because the essence of the problem is that too many applications have tray icons. Actually I just need these programs to work in the background especially those drivers.

Like this.

Among these tray icons, the red box indicates the driver software, and I don't need them to be displayed there. They just need to work properly. The green box indicates the tool software, and similarly, I only need to call them through shortcut keys. They don't have much value to me. Although I know that a considerable number of people need tray icons, I think there is still a group of people who do not need them. In this case, as I mentioned in 2 and 3, users are able to chose not to display tray icons at all is a win-win solution.

Some apps like everything and IDM (which I have mentioned before) are great examples.

Everything is a searching tool, so I don't need it appear its tray icon even in the overflow menu. When I press the shortcut key, it opens, and that's enough.

IDM is a download tool. It has plugins inside the browser that automatically call it when I download it, and I don't even need the shorycut key.

So you may already know what I mean。 Yes！ Don't show them completely！ (even a litte).

Finally, about the first thing I suggested,

Powertoys can provide small menu to better access tray icons (can be called by a shortcut key).

is a menu for all system tray icons.

Because using software that shrinks to a tray menu can sometimes be really inconvenient. For example, my habit is to leave my commonly used chat apps outside, along with a few other apps, which is already sufficient（In a laptop, they are much enough. Adding more is really
ugly）. I put the remaining software in the hidden menu. However, when you call them, you must return to the taskbar, expand the hidden menu, and then perform the corresponding operation. Why is there a shortcut key for switching foreground tasks, while the tray menu, which is not easy to reach, cannot have one.

Similarly, on a large display screen, the tray menu is also difficult to access, and you have to drag and drop the mouse to click on it, which is not very modern.

So my real idea is to add a floating menu that displays all system tray icons near the mouse, which can be clicked directly. If it is not easy to implement in the short term, adding an option to the system tray icon in Powertoys Run is also very helpful.

If you have seen this, thank you very much. This is really a long section. I don't know if my wording made you understand my thoughts, but I think you should know that the tray menu in Windows really has a lot of room to become more convenient and powerful.

Finally, I am truly grateful for your contributions. Powertoys really make Windows more user-friendly. And helps me a lot.

[Cmixed]

I know my proposal may have some flaws, but it's really helpful for some users like me. :-)

Anyway, thanks Power toys, thanks you all.

[ethanfangg]

For controls to simply remove system tray icons from view, anything not solved by being able to use the overflow menu is likely better filed as feedback in /feedbackhub. For specific controls on hiding the PowerToys system tray icon, I'd refer to /ref #9526. Going to close this issue accordingly.

[microsoft-github-policy-service]

Hi! We've identified this issue that best is suited for Windows Feedback Hub. To do this on Windows, WinKey+F will bring it up!