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Help needed to create System Tray skin.

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luxinnocte
Posts: 2
Joined: May 11th, 2015, 7:00 pm

Help needed to create System Tray skin.

Post by luxinnocte »

First time poster and first time skin maker.

I've been using Rainmeter Panel Crish29 and am loving it, but wanting to create a small bar in the top right of my screen that duplicates the system tray icons and that's it. Having a problem finding anything to either do so or help me make one.

If anyone can give me a tip I'd appreciate it.

(I'm aware that this can't be a replacement for the actual system tray, just wanting to duplicate what's there.)
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jsmorley
Developer
Posts: 22628
Joined: April 19th, 2009, 11:02 pm
Location: Fort Hunt, Virginia, USA

Re: Help needed to create System Tray skin.

Post by jsmorley »

You really just can't.

You can duplicate a little time meter, and maybe have it run some windows time/date dialog when you click it. You can duplicate a little speaker meter that can pop-up a little slider for the system volume. You can duplicate an image that shows your network status, and I guess have it run "Network and sharing center" in Windows when clicked.

You can even have little icons for each program that is showing in the system tray / overflow area. This would not be something Rainmeter does natively, but there are ways with programming languages like AutoIt and such that can give you some info about what is running in the tray.

Even with that, I don't think you can show the icon associated with the program easily. The path to the executable is not associated with the system tray, just the name, like "Rainmeter.exe". The system tray doesn't give a hoot where the application is, the system tray is not about "running" stuff.

What you can't do at all is virtually everything that is the entire reason for the system tray. How things behave in the system tray is VERY specific Windows functionality, specific to the system tray. Rainmeter can't duplicate it. It's not what Rainmeter is for.

You would not be able to use the icon / name of the program in the tray to in any way have any control over "minimize / restore" of the program's window. Rainmeter can't do that, and in fact I'm not sure any external program other than Windows itself reliably can.

The right-click context menu for a program running in the tray, which is very specifically coded in the program to be displayed and function as a part of the system tray functionality, would be entirely unavailable to you.

None of the "status indications" that program can use with their very specific system tray icons would be visible.


There may be 3rd-party "system tray clone" programs you can get, I just don't know. If so, I guess you can have Rainmeter run that when you want your, uhm, second system tray.

I don't mean to sound discouraging, but you can't get even close, not remotely close, to anything even approximating the system tray (really called the notification area now) or the taskbar in Windows. What you can get is a clock / volume control / network status and make those visibly (although not functionally) similar to Windows.
luxinnocte
Posts: 2
Joined: May 11th, 2015, 7:00 pm

Re: Help needed to create System Tray skin.

Post by luxinnocte »

Well crap...

At least I have an answer to my question. Thanks for letting me know. Might try the few icons for volume and such.

Cheers
eliwoodfe
Posts: 1
Joined: June 30th, 2020, 10:54 pm

Re: Help needed to create System Tray skin.

Post by eliwoodfe »

there is a 3rd party program that might be a good fit for what you are looking for. Check out Winstep Nexus