#44: What’s on your (system) tray?

Posted on September 13, 2024 (Updated September 12, 2024) by ewand

The System Tray is that little collection of icons typically found next to the clock, in the lower corner of a Windows desktop. It’s been part of the UI since Windows 95, and serves to highlight what is happening with the system and the apps that are running on it. At times, Microsoft has tried to call this the “Notification Area”, not be confused with the thing that appears when you press WindowsKey+N (that’s the Notification Center or Action Center).

In common with other bits of Windows (the right-click menu in Explorer being another), it was easy for 3^rd party software and hardware drivers to add their own icons into the “systray”, which might make things convenient for the user until they have 30 or 40 such things cluttering the whole place up. Why wouldn’t you want to quickly control your video modes or tweak Bluetooth settings, after all?

So in sweep-under-the-carpet style, Microsoft added a way of hiding less useful system tray icons so you don’t see them all the time, but they can be exposed by clicking the little arrow to the side.

As you’d expect, Microsoft has defaulted only the more obviously-useful icons to be visible, like battery or Wi-Fi (for laptops), sound/volume etc. OneDrive is jammed in there too, if you have it set up to sync.

To tweak which icons show by default, look in Settings > Personalisation > Taskbar (try right-clicking on a blank bit of the main taskbar and choose Taskbar settings)

Many of the icons you’ll see don’t necessarily do much when you click (left or right) on them, other than jump to the app itself, but some afford the ability to right-click and do something in that app directly. One useful tweak not there by default might be to include Teams, so you can quickly set your status.

To hide or change the clock and date in the System Tray, dive a little further into the Date & time settings…

… and you could have the clock show seconds as well, if you really wanted.

This week’s Copilot-drawn banner image is – clearly – inspired by Eddie/Suzy Izzard’s iconic and lightly sweary “Death Star Canteen” sketch, and the minifig animation of it. Happy Friday – but you’ll still need a tray.

610 – Windows 11 Hokey Cokey

Posted on December 10, 2021 by ewand

The Hokey Cokey / Hokey Pokey is a childhood party tradition many of us will recall, where you put something in and take it out again, or a step forward then a step back. The transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11 aims to simplify the user interface to a large extent, hiding things that some people think just get in the way, while beautifying the stuff that remains.

Power users might grind their teeth at some choices – like the context menu when you right-click on a file; it’s more spaced out (in terms of screen size) but designed to be clearer and more relevant, hiding some of the chaff that 3^rd party applications might install.

It even adds some hitherto hidden features, like Copy as path, which puts the full path & name of the selected file into the clipboard, ready to be pasted into a file selection dialog, for example. Some common commands – like cut or copy – have been replaced with icons at either the top or bottom of the dialog. If you want to use the old-style menu with the full set of options, you can do that too by selecting Show more… or pressing SHIFT+F10.

You can disable the new menu if you prefer the old style – just run a single command from an elevated command prompt then use Task Manager to restart the Windows Explorer application (or reboot).

Another piece of Windows that’s had a refresh is the notification function – first appearing in Windows 8 and having redesigns with every variant of Windows since, this is an attempt to summarize alerts from multiple apps in a similar way to how smartphones do it.

Windows 10 shows a little callout in the corner of the screen with the number of notifications to read; click on that or press WindowsKey+A and you’ll see a pane slide in showing notifications on the top, and a load of Quick Actions icons below.

Windows 11 has cleaned the UI up somewhat, with notifications and Quick Actions being separated out – look for a simple bubble with a number in the corner of the screen. Clicking on that or the date/time in the system tray (or press WindowsKey+N) displays notifications.

Pressing WindowsKey+A or just clicking on one of the network / sound / battery icons on the system tray will display the Quick Settings pop up, which can be tweaked by clicking on the pen icon. You can easily remove settings you don’t use – like Battery Saver, maybe – and swap in others from a fairly short list. Perhaps that list will grow in time.

Also worth a note is that WindowsKey+W brings in widgets from the other side, showing news, weather, calendar etc.

562 – Connect your phone to Your Phone

Posted on January 15, 2021 by ewand

A couple of years back, an initiative was launched to more deeply connect Windows to certain ^†Android smartphones, notably starting with Samsung devices. Now the “Your Phone” application is built into Windows 10, and offers an increasing amount of utility for Android users, to sync and share content, notifications and even apps between the two devices.

If you’re an iPhone user, the connected experience is somewhat watered-down and achieved in a different way, and is mostly about syncing content and continuing web browsing from your phone to your PC. Thank the differences in Android vs iOS ecosystems for that…

For various Samsung phones and the Surface Duo, you can also control and mirror apps from your phone on the PC as well as transfer content. If you have a phone with the shiniest of shiny Android 11, you may be able to treat mobile apps just as if they are Windows apps – pin them to Start menu, run them in their own window on the PC etc. See more here.

For most other Android devices, you can’t yet do the mirroring within the Your Phone experience, but you do get to share app notifications on your PC (so you’ll get “toasts” in Windows for WhatsApp etc), exchange photos and files quickly and easily, manage messaging and even, should you want to, take and make calls on your PC.

To get it up and running, start the Your Phone app on your PC, and the pre-installed Link To Windows app if you have a supported Samsung or Surface device; if not, then install the Your Phone companion app on the phone to get everything set up.

It can be handy getting notifications on your PC that originate on phone apps, especially if your device isn’t next to you – but there may be limited use if all the notification on the phone would normally do is make you tap on it to read the story or interact with the app.

If you’re going to enable notifications, be careful – you’ll want to go through the list of apps that are on your phone, and only allow the ones you really need, or you’ll be getting a blizzard of unwanted toasts on your PC, assuming you’re not in Focus Assist mode.

Perhaps the best feature on Your Phone is the rapid ability to copy photos – without having to send them by email or wait for OneDrive to sync them. Using Your Phone, you can copy the file immediately to your PC, or just browse the photos on a larger screen and possibly screen grab bits of interest to insert into documents or emails. Sadly, what it won’t let you do is manage the photos easily, like delete the garbage…

Still, it’s free and it’s potentially useful for anyone with a Windows 10 PC and an Android phone – so definitely worth a look. For more info on how to use and troubleshoot Your Phone, see here.