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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Minimize windows to the system tray with Minime

Minimie
Tired of looking at icons in your Windows taskbar representing for every running program, including ones you don't click on very often? Minime is a little Windows utility that lets you minimize applications to the system tray. But unlike Trayconizer and TrayEverything, Minime doesn't replace a dozen taskbar icons with a dozen system tray icons. Instead minimized programs are hidden behind a single Minime button.

You can minimize any program using a customizable hotkey, and you can find the hidden apps by clicking the Minime icon in the system tray. It's worth pointing out that when programs are minimized to Minime they don't show up in the Alt+Tab menu, so you'll only want to hide apps that you don't need to access very often. For example you might want to minimize your music player since it can keep the tunes going in the background without your intervention.

Minime is a single executable file that doesn't require installation. In other words, you can throw it on a USB flash drive and carry it with you for use on any PC.

[via TechnoSpot]

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Pin minimized windows to desktop thumbnails with miniMIZE

I'm always on the lookout for a good application to utilize the extra space on my widescreen monitor, and this morning I happened upon miniMIZE.

It's a free app for Windows that monitors the applications you launch. When you minimize a window, miniMIZE removes the button from your taskbar and creates a thumbnail. It's easy on system resources, only consuming about 7mb of memory.

Thumbnails can be dragged anywhere on your desktop, or you can let miniMIZE automatically line them up along any edge of your desktop. You can also choose to pin icons to the desktop or have them float on top of active windows.

Further tweaks include thumbnail size, opacity, customizable hotkeys, and application icon overlays. Any applications you don't want handled by miniMIZE can be added to an exclusions list - just drag the crosshairs onto the appropriate program.

It's similar to ThumbWin, which Brad wrote about last year, but the site and application are both English.

Note that miniMIZE will only catch things after it's running - so you'll have to close and re-open your other apps after installing it for things to take effect.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Minimize anything to the Windows system tray with Trayconizer

Trayconizer
Trayconizer is a little application that lets you change the behavior of any Windows program so that it can be minimized to the system tray instead of the taskbar. You'll have to configure each application manually, because Trayconizer is designed to be inserted into a program shortcut.

Here's how it works. You unzip Trayconizer to a folder on your PC. Let's say it's C:\Trayconizer. Now all you have to do is insert Trayconizer into the target field of a program shortcut. For example if you want to be able to minimize Firefox to the system tray, you would right-click on the shortcut for Firefox and insert the path to Trayconizer.exe before the path to Firefox.exe. It should read something like

"c:\trayconizer\trayconizer.exe" c:program files\mozilla\firefox.exe

You can also use XNeat, a program we covered a while back, to minimize running programs to the system tray. But Trayconizer has the advantage of running automatically every time you launch a program so that all you have to do is click the minimize button.

[via Freeware Genius]

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Hide running windows with WatchCat

WatchCatWatchCat is a free Windows utility that lets you hide running programs from view. It basically minimizes selected programs and removes their entries from the Windows taskbar and Alt+Tab menu. It won't close them; it won't save you any RAM, but it will clear up some screen real estate while you let a program run in the background.

At first this might not seem that useful. But ask yourself, do you really need your music player to show up in the taskbar if all it's doing is playing your MP3 collection? Wouldn't you rather have it run in the background sometimes when you have a bunch of other program windows open and littering your taskbar?

WatchCat has a few other built in goodies like system tray icons that give you quick access to shared network folders all the files saved on your desktop. There's also a timer feature which theoretically lets you set windows to automatically hide or close after a certain period of time. But when we clicked on the timer operations option, nothing happened.

[via gHacks]

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

ThumbWin: Minimize open windows to thumbnails

ThumbWin
When you hit the minimize tab on any program in Windows, your application will disappear into the taskbar. But if you've got more than a few applications hiding out in your taskbar, it can be kind of tough to find the program you're looking for.

ThumbWin gives your minimized windows a bit more visual information. Once you install and run this tiny application, any time you minimize a window, a thumbnail will be created on your desktop. You can click the thumbnail to maximize a window, or click the close button on a thumbnail to exit a program.

ThumbWin only kicks in if you minimize applications one at a time. If you hit the show desktop button, no thumbnails will be created. The utility is highly customizable, letting you change the thumbnail dimensions and layout. You can also select certain programs to exclude from ThumbWin, which will prevent thumbnails from being generated when you minimize those applications.

[via CyberNet]

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Windows, Open Source

Browser Tip of the Day: Minimize Firefox to the System Tray

MinimizeToTrayTabbed browsing already saves us a ton of space on the taskbar, which might make this extension a bit superfluous, but if you're like me and always have Firefox open, you might like reclaim that last bit of taskbar space. That's what MinimizeToTray does, by disappearing the taskbar item for Firefox and sticking an icon in the system tray (the part of the taskbar where the clock sits) instead. Additionally, there's an option to minimize to the tray only when you want it to, and a "Turbo" mode which keeps the tray icon visible even after you've exited Firefox. And as a bonus, it works with Thundbird, too.

Via The Extensions Mirror.

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