Abstract
- Protecting all system tray icons seen helps me keep conscious of what’s operating within the background.
- Seen icons aren’t cluttered if display screen area permits and background apps are restricted.
- System tray icons ought to all be proven by default, as they’re necessary for productiveness.
Individuals today obsess over minimalistic person interfaces, to the purpose that they sacrifice performance for aesthetics, and I get it. I hold my desktop pretty clear, too. However with regards to my taskbar, it’s a unique story; I hold each system tray icon proven, and it has been working nice for me.
Why I Maintain All My System Tray Icons Seen
In case you are not fluent in Home windows’ lingo, the system tray is the correct a part of the taskbar the place all of the little icons of apps operating within the background reside. Usually, the system tray solely exhibits a number of important icons, with the remainder hidden in a small arrow sub-menu. Consider it as a folder for background apps.
Once I put in Windows 11 for the first time on my new PC earlier this 12 months, I began digging across the numerous settings and realized that there is an choice to show all system tray icons. It’s not a brand new characteristic, however I’d by no means actually thought-about utilizing it earlier than.
The primary motive I enabled it’s simply to remain conscious of what apps are energetic within the background. In some instances, it helps me determine what I wish to do on the go. If I see that Screenpresso is energetic, I do know I can press Print Display to immediately take a precise, cropped screenshot. If it is not, I’d flip it on or use Win+Shift+S for a cropped shot as a substitute, or press Print Display and paste the complete display screen into chat to rapidly share it with a buddy.
It is also value noting that background can nonetheless eat a number of system assets like RAM, CPU processing energy, and web bandwidth.
For instance, if I overlook that Steam is operating within the background and a sport begins auto-updating, slowing down my looking to a halt, I can look on the system tray and rapidly determine what is going on on. Although my PC can deal with background apps, I nonetheless shut something non-essential earlier than launching a sport. It is a easy, straightforward, and efficient strategy to squeeze out extra performance.
One other profit is that I can simply see notifications on apps like Slack, as they show a dot over the icon. I additionally get delicate replace alerts for issues like graphics drivers and Java.
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It is also simply extra handy. As an example, I sometimes must reset SignalRGB (my go-to app for syncing RGB) after waking up from sleep or perhaps a chilly boot as a result of it typically glitches and would not work. Protecting the icon all the time seen means I can simply right-click and shut it rapidly, which saves me the additional click on that I would in any other case must do if the app had been hidden within the extra icons sub-menu.
It is Not About Being Disorganized
Whereas having all of my background apps completely proven within the system tray feels like it could be a cluttered mess, it is truly not. I am a reasonably organized and tidy particular person—my desktop is just reserved for put in video games, my Begin Menu is sorted into folders, and I solely have a number of of my most important apps pinned within the taskbar.
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Furthermore, the system tray icons are literally pretty small. On my 1440p 27-inch LG monitor and with UI scaling at 125%, they’re simply the correct measurement that I could make out what icons they’re with out being so giant that they take up half the display screen. It is laborious to convey the scale of my system tray, however it’s solely about as tall and lengthy as my index finger.
That stated, the scenario may look utterly totally different on a a lot smaller show, corresponding to a 12-inch laptop computer, the place a system tray like mine would take up a good portion of the display screen, creating a multitude.
Furthermore, I don’t often have that many apps operating within the background. I like to shut online game launchers as quickly as I’m finished enjoying, and I do the identical with work-related apps. The one ones that keep open on a regular basis are Discord, SignalRGB, graphics card software program, and some peripheral-related apps. On my 14-inch Dell Latitude 5420 laptop computer, it is simply the Intel graphics driver, Slack, and Asana.
I’d a lot quite see all these apps and have simpler entry to them than cope with a clear however non-functional taskbar. Moreover, who says icons are messy anyway?
This Ought to Be the Default
Realistically, most individuals don’t run sufficient background apps to justify hiding them behind a separate menu, so I don’t get why that’s the default habits. A UI, any UI, ought to prioritize info first and aesthetics second.
The typical particular person can be higher off realizing what apps are operating within the background in case their laptop or web slows down, as clicking the arrow to see all background apps is not precisely intuitive. One would assume that Home windows will present you probably the most resource-intensive background apps first, however it would not.
Should you resolve to go this route, there’s just one small annoyance: each time an app updates (like Discord, which updates consistently), you may have to re-enable it within the settings. There is no international “all the time present all icons” possibility, only a per-app toggle within the menus. Fortuitously, I discovered a everlasting fix for this on GitHub (set up at your individual danger) that mechanically retains all icons and notifications seen within the tray.
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