Excellent free program minimizer
The ability to minimize a program to an icon in the system tray is a useful feature that saves valuable space on your task bar. Some programs have this feature built in but many don’t. It is possible however, to minimize any program to a tray icon by using a third party utility. My top recommendation has long been TrayIt! [1] but subscriber Matt Hall recently wrote "Gizmo, a good alternative to TrayIt! is PowerMenu. It works slightly differently: first it gives the option to minimize to system tray on a context menu rather than by using the Ctrl key. Second it has additional options to keep the window always on top and also set priority and transparency. Like Trayit!, it doesn’t need to be installed." Good suggestion Matt. Both programs work well, though TrayIt! seems to be an active project while PowerMenu hasn’t been updated for some time. Also, some of the additional PowerMenu features only work for Windows NT and later.
[1] http://www.teamcti.com/trayit/trayit.htm Freeware, all Windows version, 66KB
[2] http://www.veridicus.com/tummy/programming/powermenu/ Freeware, all Windows , 49KB

Related posts:

  1. Free utility minimizes Windows apps to the system tray
  2. Wrapping Up Tray Tools
  3. The best Windows program launcher
  4. …And Alternative “To Tray” Utilities
  5. The best free reminder/to-do program
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All Windows Secrets articles posted on 2007-12-13: