Minimize main window to trayicon

[Ruhe]

I would prefer it to minimize the VirtualBox main window to a trayicon instead of a taskbar entry (current behavior). Therefore it would be nice if there is an option to choose in which way the main window will be minimized.

[Frank Mehnert]

This would be a heavy dependency to the window manager. Or is there any common API shared between the global players (kwin, metacity, ...)?

[trutwijd]

I second the vote for this - in the meantime you can use tools like KDocker to minimize any app to the system tray in KDE - sure there are similar apps for Windows, Gnome, etc.

Sylpheed has a nice plugin that does minimize to tray for pretty much any WM, so I would assume this can be done somehow.

Thanks,

Josh

[Clifford]

I have to agree that VBox should have a "minimize to tray icon" feature. Even if the actual Virtual Machine windows don't have this functionality, at least the main application could be run from the tray. It is very confusing to users for the systems that I administer who I try to get using VBox because they are so used to closing Windows with the "X" at the top-right corner for windows that they are done using, so the tendency is to shut it down because they are "running VBox only once."

The default behavior of VBox is harder to get used to on a daily basis when you stop tinkering with it and actually use it to be productive.

However, as in most postings, I want to say how impressed and amazed I am at how incredible this product is! Keep up the good work!

[andres suarez]

there is an open source program that do this. Is RBTray ​http://rbtray.sourceforge.net/

Replying to Ruhe:

I would prefer it to minimize the "InnoTek VirtualBox" main window to a trayicon instead of a taskbar entry (current behaviour). Therefore it would be nice if there is an option to choose in which way the main window will be minimized.

[corz]

Minimize to tray is not something applications should be doing (aside from perhaps small accessories). There are many utilities that can do this for you; assuming you like this behaviour, you will presumably want to apply it to lots of applications on your system - are you gonna ask all the developers to adopt this?

Why not put your weight behind the request to have a minimize hotkey, so we can switch from full screen to a minimized state at a touch.

​http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/2097

If you want tray-only action, you can easily add that yourself (a-la AllToTray, etc., etc.)

[wacher]

corz, please :) tray icon =/= task bar

[Toitoine]

Replying to frank:

This would be a heavy dependency to the window manager. Or is there any common API shared between the global players (kwin, metacity, ...)?

All functions are available and abstracted in QT class :

The QSystemTrayIcon class can be used on the following platforms:

• All supported versions of Windows.
• All window managers for X11 that implement the freedesktop.org system tray specification, including recent versions of KDE and GNOME.
• Mac OS X, with the exception of showMessage()

This should be very simple to make it works.

[Toitoine]

Update : I've see in the source code that the work is in progress : code within #ifdef VBOX_GUI_WITH_SYSTRAY

[Technologov]

Added myself as CC.

-Technologov