The System Tray or Notification Area in Windows plays an important role in how we use the programs. The frequently used programs are supposed to be minimized to the taskbar while not so less frequently used programs are put in the System Tray. Unfortunately, most of the application do not give option to minimize them in the System Tray. With the help of open source application RBTray you can minimize any application in Windows to the system tray.
RBTray is a small Windows program that runs in the background and allows almost any window to be minimized to the system tray. You can download RBTray from its sourforce page. The download is only 91 kilobytes in size. The download is a standalone portable program so you do not have to install anything. Just extract the contents of the downloaded ZIP archive to a folder and run the program. It contains both 32-bit and 64-bit programs, so you have to run the correct RBTray.exe.
When you run the program, you would see nothing happening – no windows, no system tray icon, but its running in the background. If you right-click on the minimize button of any window, it would minimize to the system tray. Left-clicking on the minimize button of a window will still minimize it to the taskbar. If you want to restore that application again, then all you have to do is click on its system tray icon.
If you right-click on the system tray icon of a minimized application, then you are shown options to restore or close that window. You can also see options to exit RBTray. If you exit the RBTray, it would restore all the minimized windows and close RBTray.
RBTray is a very easy to use and standalone application that enables you to minimize any window or program to the system tray (instead of the task bar) by simply right-clicking on the standard minimize button. This can be very useful if you want to unclutter your taskbar and put some of the windows in the system tray.
You can download RBTray from http://rbtray.sourceforge.net/.