You can clear up space on a Windows desktop by minimizing applications you’re not currently looking at to the taskbar. But what happens when the taskbar is so overrun with programs that you can’t make heads or tales of it? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just minimize your applications to the system tray? TrayEverything is a Windows utility that lets you do just that.

Just download and install (or download the no-install ZIP version) of TrayEverything and run it. You’ll see a list of running applications. Right click on any program you want to minimize to the system tray and it will disappear from the desktop and Windows taskbar. In the system tray you’ll see a small icon representing the program. Just click that icon to bring the program back up.

Note that TrayEverything needs to be run each time you want to minimize an application to the system tray. Once it’s restored, clicking the program’s minimize button will send it to the taskbar, not the system tray. If you’re looking for a more permanent solution, you might want to check out  Trayconizer, a command line utility that you can add to any program shortcut in order to automatically minimize it to the system tray whenever you hit the minimize button.

Features

• You can minimize to tray ANY window
• You can completely hide the window, that is, no icon in the tray
• You can hide the window and protect it with a password
• You can group icons of the same application in one single icon – let’s not overfill the tray too!
• You have FIVE different ways to minimize an application into tray:
  • Double click on the window’s caption in the TrayEverything main window
  • TrayEverything can add a new button in the title bar of each window to minimize it
  • TrayEverything can catch the click on the minimize button of the window and minimize it – no buttons added to the title bar
  • You can choose an hotkey to minimize windows with a single key press
  • Or you can let the application go by itself in the tray with the Autominimize feature – inactive windows will be autominimized by TrayEverything
• The program has a built-in update engine
• English/Italian/Japanese/Portuguese languages available
• This program has been created using WinAPIs – no MFC!
• Compatible with Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP – Not tested with Vista
• Completely freeware