Windows tray - remove unnecessary things. Why do some people call the notification area "tray"

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System tray optimization.

Trey... “What is Trey?” - my friends often ask me. As always, I willingly tell them, explain, show them. And many of them understand that this is still new to them.

After all, now, with such rapid development computer technology, you often can’t even keep up with their ever-newer innovations in operating system design. But as for the tray, this “notification miracle” is as old as our entire world.

Few people know that this area of ​​the taskbar (the strip at the bottom of the screen on which there is a Start button) was just an experiment in the first normal operating room Windows system 95. Normal in the sense of convenient for the average user.

Thanks to this small area, which was located on the right side of the taskbar, the user was able to receive some important information. As a rule, this was information from the operating system itself. Which? For example, notifications about printing errors, displaying the sound settings icon, current language icon, battery charge, etc.

The experiment was partially a success and, thanks to this, we have the opportunity to use such a convenient thing like trey. Many features have been added, some have become more advanced. And the number of programs that can work in the tray increases progressively, making work convenient. But often this convenience backfires...

We will understand this variety in order to make our taskbar even more elegant!

I won’t write a lot of words, but let’s just move on to the setup. After all, the faster we learn to manage the tray, the faster “normal” convenience will come to us.

The only thing I will say is that all programs immediately show their tray icon when first launched. This is the system default. And in order to hide it, you will have to manually configure the fact of its hiding. Of course, the rule works provided that the program itself is capable of running in the tray. At the same time, some programs allow the user to choose the program display mode: in the tray or not. Which is a big plus for such software products.

Hidden tray Expanded tray

Let's set up the programs:

1. Click on the taskbar right click mouse and select "Properties". Properties system panel tasks
2. In order for hiding icons to work, check the box in step 1.
3. Next, click the “Configure…” button (step 2).

System tray settings

Well, our tray has turned from long and awkward to beautiful and elegant.

Thanks to this note, you can greatly reduce the visible part of your tray without affecting its functionality. And besides, you will gain increased space for displaying your windows.

Use it to your advantage!

Short answer: because they are mistaken.

Long answer: official name things at the bottom of the screen - “taskbar” ( taskbar). It consists of several elements - the “Start” button, buttons for switching between tasks, the clock, and the “notification area” ( taskbar notification area).

A common mistake is to refer to the notification area as the “tray” (or even “system tray”). It was never called that. If you see "system tray" mentioned in the documentation, you can report that you have found a bug.

Where did this misnomer come from?

IN earlier versions Chicago - even before the project received Windows name 95 - the taskbar was not a taskbar, but a folder fixed to the bottom of the screen. It was always in sight, and you could “throw” documents and labels into it for quick access- similar to a tray for all sorts of things, which is placed in the top drawer of a desk.

This is where the name “tray” comes from tray) desktop". A slightly dubious continuation of the “desktop on the screen” metaphor - but still within the bounds of common sense. (Now, if instead of wallpaper they put a tablecloth on the table...)

Badges minimized applications lay directly on the desktop - just like in the classic Windows interface 3.x

The tray could be fixed at any edge of the screen, or it could be “undocked” and moved around the screen like a regular folder.

Then we abandoned this idea. We decided to place buttons for switching between tasks on the always visible panel. (In one version of Chicago, the user can choose whether to use the panel as a tray or as a taskbar; and icons for minimized applications appear on both the desktop and the taskbar.)

The idea of ​​buttons for switching tasks also did not come immediately. Initially, a series of tabs were conceived, “flipping through” running applications. The version of Chicago with “task tabs” did not become public, and even the screenshot Raymond drew from memory disappeared into oblivion along with gotdotnet.com. The only thing left is black and white drawing in Raymond's book.

Not all programs were ready for the top of the screen to be occupied by a row of tabs, and the idea had to be abandoned. On the other hand, the code for switching “task tabs” was already ready by that time, and it was easier to redraw the tabs so that they looked like buttons - than to rewrite the entire code using real buttons. So the task switching buttons remained disguised as tabs (window of the SysTabControl32 class).

Diachronic Help: Tray functionality remains in the system. The user could drag any folder to the edge of the screen to pin it as new panel, or as an element of an existing panel. One such panel, the "quick launch" panel added with IE4, partially repeated the purpose of the original tray - storing frequently needed shortcuts. Paradoxically, in Windows 7 we see the taskbar returning to this original concept of a shortcut tray.

The tab buttons have turned, as befits a row of buttons, into a toolbar (a window of the ToolbarWindow32 class). This happened in Windows XP when the taskbar was updated for the first time since Windows 95; and starting with Windows 7, this is a window with a new unique class, MSTaskListWClass.

The notification area (a row of icons) has been a toolbar (ToolbarWindow32) from the very beginning, and remains so to this day.

So, when we decided to make a task switching bar instead of a tray, we went through all our documentation and replaced the mentions of the word “tray” with “taskbar”. Nowhere in the documentation Windows Shell the word "tray" is no longer mentioned.

Probably, it began to be called “system tray” due to the fact that Windows 95 had a program systray.exe, which displayed standard notification icons: volume control, PCMCIA status, battery charge indicator. If you terminate the systray.exe process, the notification icons disappear. So users decided, “Yeah, systray is the system process responsible for the notification area; I'm sure it's called a "system tray." We have been trying to eradicate the misconception that arose because of this for eight years now...

Unfortunately, for the sake of backward compatibility I had to leave Tray in the names of the window classes: Shell_TrayWnd for the taskbar, TrayNotifyWnd for the notification area, and TrayClockWClass for the clock. But in all these cases, “tray” refers to the entire taskbar - from the time it was tray.

Worst of all, developers of other Windows components and others Microsoft products got caught up in the confusion, and now the name "tray" appears in their official documentation and code examples. Some even have the audacity to claim that “system tray” is the official name for the notification area.

Not true. The notification area was never a tray: it appeared when the tray no longer existed. It was always called the notification area, and the icons in it were always called notification icons ( notification icons).

So why should I care? Since everyone now calls it a tray, is it time to get used to it?
No. Would you like it if everyone called you by someone else's name?

It is no secret that during the operation of Windows, many icons accumulate in the system tray (notification area in the lower right corner of the monitor screen) over time.

Almost every second program or utility that we install strives to get there and then be there permanently. For beginners, the tray is very often “packed to capacity” already 2-3 days after reinstalling the system.

More experienced users They usually monitor this and try to disable unnecessary icons, and novice users, often afraid of doing something wrong or due to lack of knowledge, do not touch the tray icons at all.

However, for most users it is no secret that if you do not put things in order in the tray, this gradually leads to a slowdown of the system as a whole, because Each icon in the lower right corner of the screen indicates that some program is currently running in background, and therefore “pulls” some part of the system resources.

It’s one thing when a program is needed for the functioning of the system or for the convenience of the user, and another thing when the program, without the user’s consent, has written itself into the tray and then simply starts up along with Windows and slows down the work.

And what’s more, many icons can remain in the tray even after uninstalling the programs that placed them there. This situation occurs due to the fact that information about these icons is written deep in the registry of the operating system and Windows itself, when uninstalling a program, does not always remove information about these icons from the registry.

Therefore, each user must monitor the tray, constantly removing everything unnecessary from there and leaving only those background programs that are truly beneficial and important to at this stage work.

Our task in this lesson is to learn how to simply and quickly remove everything unnecessary from the tray, and also to understand how to safely clean the registry section responsible for tray icons.

Let's get started!

First of all, we must determine which program icons are present in this area. Many of the icons are common knowledge (such as time or volume) so everyone knows about them, but some icons can be a mystery. In this case, we need to identify each icon in order to know exactly which program it corresponds to.

If the icon is unknown to us, then we can simply try to hover the mouse cursor over it and see what is displayed in the tooltip. Most often, the name of the program is already present there:

Keep in mind that not all icons for programs running in the background are displayed in the visible tray. Some icons may not be displayed at all, and some are visible right there, but in a pop-up window that appears when you click on the button with a white triangle to the left of the tray:

To see the rest of the tray icons, you need to click on the link in this window Tune...which will open a window where we can see many other icons:

By the way, all the names of those programs and processes to which the tray icons correspond are usually very clearly visible here. Please note - most of these programs are running for you AT THIS MOMENT (slowing down your computer). I am sure that if you did not pay attention to the tray before, you will now be surprised at the number running programs, slowing down your system. Each user will have their own programs and icons, but almost everyone will have extra icons!

And now that we know the names of all these programs running on the system, we must decide for ourselves what we need from this list for normal operation, and what not. In other words, our main task- disable the icons of those programs that we do not need.

For example, for our convenience, we can leave the speaker volume level icon, the time icon, the network activity icon, the antivirus or firewall icon (and perhaps 2-3 more icons of some programs for our daily work). And everything else needs to be cleaned up!

If you do not want this or that program (the icon of which is in the tray) to launch along with Windows and constantly “hang” in the background, then you can (and even need) disable it.

Sometimes all you need to do is right-click on the icon directly in the tray and select Exit or Disable and forget about this icon. But most often, after such a shutdown, the program icon will appear in the tray again after the first reboot.

In this case, you need to “dig” a little deeper and disable the program launch along with the system startup.

But before we do that, you should keep one thing in mind: there are two types of icons - system and user.

Disable system icons very easy - at the bottom of the window Notification area icons need to click the link Enable or disable system icons:

After that, just put the switch next to the extra icon in position Off:

With custom icons, the disabling process is a little more complicated, but also quite clear and accessible to everyone. As I already said, we just need to disable autoloading of programs we don’t need, so that when Windows startup they did not run in the background.

To do this, press the key combination on the keyboard Win +R(or click the mouse Start - Run), type the command in the window that appears msconfig and press Ok:

If you don’t know what a particular program is needed for, then you can always read about this program on the Internet (as they say, Google can help us).

Thus, we will remove the lion's share of icons from the tray, i.e. after restarting the computer they simply will not appear there. If some icon still returned to the tray after a reboot, this means that we need to look at the settings in the program itself that are responsible for this icon. Most likely, somewhere in the settings of this program there is a checkbox that is responsible for launching it.

In all programs it looks different (maybe not even in Russian), but in any case the meaning of this settings option will be something like this:

This checkbox, which is responsible for autostarting the program along with the system, needs to be unchecked and the program settings saved. After this, you can check the window again system autorun(via team msconfig) and after that you can be more or less sure that the next time you start Windows, such a program will not run in the background. Please note that by unchecking the boxes we do not remove the program from the computer, but simply remove it from autorun.

Thanks to such actions we have made great and important step– cleared autorun from unnecessary programs, and therefore accelerated the loading of the system and the speed of its operation as a whole.

Now let's finish the tray cleaning procedure!

I already said that even after removing programs, their icons may remain in the window Notification area icons, which means information about them continues to remain in the Windows registry.

This information, of course, can be deleted from the registry manually, but for this it is advisable for the user to have at least the most basic skills in working with the registry. Otherwise, you can mistakenly delete something unnecessary and ultimately completely disable the system.

To eliminate such a scenario, we will take a different route!

In one of the lessons I talked about the wonderful program CCleaner, with which we studied. IN this lesson I will not repeat the entire cleaning process, but will simply show one single checkbox in the settings of this program, which is responsible for cleaning the branches we need system registry:

If on the tab Windows in this program we will check the box Notification area cache, then we will see this warning:

Click the button in this window Ok, confirming that we have been warned, after which we launch a system cleanup using CCleaner programs(cm. ). Thanks to this cleanup, unnecessary entries in the corresponding branches Windows registry will be cleaned (without manual intervention) and only the entries we need will remain, the icons of which we would like to leave in the tray.

Well, the last step remains - to do what we were told in the warning message, namely, restart the process explorer.exe.

Everything here is also quite simple if you know what to do!

Using a keyboard shortcut Ctrl +Shift +Esc launch Task Manager and on the tab Processes find the name explorer.exe. Right-click on this name and select the item in the menu that opens End the process:

I draw your attention that after executing this command on Desktop all icons will disappear, and the system will not work as expected, which the system will warn us about:

In principle, you shouldn’t be afraid of this (it’s just a shutdown Windows Explorer), but just in case, I would recommend saving everything before disabling this process unsaved documents(if there are any) and close all programs, because then you will need to restart your computer.

After everything you need is saved and everything unnecessary is closed, press the button End the process and we get empty Desk, lack of taskbar, etc.

Well, after rebooting the computer the process explorer will be launched automatically, Desk and all windows will work in normal mode, and the extra icons in the window Notification area icons will disappear (and therefore will not be in the tray).

At the end of the lesson, I want to add (just in case) that if suddenly after disconnecting in Task Manager process explorer.exe if something goes wrong as I described, you can always manually start this process. To do this in the window Task Manager select menu item File – New task(Run...):

Then in the window that opens, enter the command explorer and click Ok:

Thanks to this command, the explorer will start and everything should function as usual. Most likely, you will not need this procedure, but it is better to know about it!

That's all I have!

I hope you liked the lesson and will help you bring such an important component of the system as the notification area in the tray into proper condition and speed up the system.

Put away icon from the system tray You can also do this without closing a program running in the background. To do this, right-click on the Windows Taskbar and select “Properties” from the context menu that opens. At the bottom of the "Taskbar" tab of the dialog box that opens, click the "Customize" button. The notification settings dialog box will open, in which you can choose how a particular notification will behave when various actions. Select the "Always Hide" command from the drop-down list opposite the notification line if you want to remove this icon from tray. Hidden icon You can always return it by clicking on the arrow, which opens all hidden notifications.

If icon, located in the system tray, cannot be removed using the above methods, you can try to remove this program using the Manager Windows tasks. You can launch it with the combination Ctrl keys+Alt+Del. Go to the "Processes" tab and find out which process is responsible for the existence of the tray icon (processes and icons, as a rule, have the same or similar names). In order to remove this icon, highlight the line and click "End Process". If at next switch on computer icon continues to appear, remove the program corresponding to it from startup.

The system tray, in which program icons and the clock are located, is called the tray. System performance is directly proportional to the number of icons in this panel: the fewer there are, the faster the operating system loads at startup.

You will need

• Working with the system tray.

Instructions

To remove an icon from the tray, you need to close the program that launched it. For example, the AIMP audio player is displayed not only on the taskbar, but also in the tray. Right-click on the player icon and select “Exit”, literally after a few seconds the icon along with the program will be automatically closed.

In some cases, you may need to remove the tray icon, but the program should remain open and fully functional. To do this, go to the program settings and activate the appropriate option. Using the same player as an example: open it and go to its settings - press the key combination Ctrl + P. In the window that opens, go to the “Player” block, select the “Tray” section, and on the right side of the window check the box next to “Always show icon” in the tray." Click the Apply and Close buttons.

You can also hide the tray icon using standard means operating system. Right-click the Start menu button and select Properties. In the window that opens, go to the “Taskbar” tab. Here, select the programs that you want to hide behind the double arrow button and check the “Always hide” box. Click OK to close the setup window. Look at the system tray, all the icons that you selected are automatically hidden behind the arrow.

Today we'll talk about such an interesting concept as systemic Windows tray (system tray). The scientific definition of a tray is a notification area or a so-called toolbar element.

This notification area used for programs that run on the system for a long time or constantly, but are rarely used. These can be antiviruses, ICQ, Skype and other software. Tray allows you to use the left mouse button to display the interface window necessary program. By simple setup using special programs You can place any program in the tray.

A little history of the system tray

Initially, during Windows-95, the system tray was used to display small system messages, for example, about the start or impossibility of printing a document on the printer, about overflow hard drive etc. This also had its downsides. Many programs placed their icons in the tray, and it became too cluttered.

With the advent Windows XP The system tray has become more modern in terms of displaying icons. Now it's possible to customize it. Can be hidden unnecessary programs and show only those that are constantly required.

In new operating systems like 7 and higher icons gradually accumulate in the system tray remote programs. To get rid of this, run a series of simple commands.

To change the notification area (system tray), a huge number of various programs(paid and free). They can significantly increase its area and improve many characteristics. Whether to use them or not is up to everyone. Important nuance- they spend RAM, this is especially noticeable if the computer is weak. Well, that's all about the system tray for today.