We all are aware of the feature which allows us to minimize a program or the application window to the tray. This minimizing to tray feature is definitely a very useful for sure, for the reason that this can actually remove the program from the taskbar and that too without closing that application window. I have seen people who love this feature and prefer minimizing the applications and other windows to the tray, though I personally don’t like this feature much. Here are some browser extensions which allow you to minimize your Firefox and Chrome browsers to the tray.

Tray Hot Key for Firefox :

This Firefox add-on named as Tray Hot Key provides the functionality to minimize the Firefox browser windows to be minimized to tray, simply install the add-on, go to the ‘Add-ons’ under the ‘Tools’ tab, there click on the ‘Extensions’ in the left panel, select the ‘Options’ to access the options and customize the Tray Hot Key for you, here is a snapshot of the options window, have a look.

This consists mainly of 3 parts, first one is for defining the hot key, by default ‘CTRL+`’ is the hot key, you can customize this as per your convenience. Second section allows more customization, like you can choose to minimize the browser to tray even when you choose to close the Firefox window, etc.  Last section talks about defining the opacity for the same, personally I didn’t find this section of much use, keeping in mind the actual functionality of this add-on.

You can install the Tray Hot Key from the official add-on page.

I tried to find more Firefox add-ons which allow minimizing the Firefox to tray, but this is the only one which works for Firefox 8, in case you are using the older version of Firefox, you can find more add-ons for this.

Minimize Chrome to tray for Chrome :

This one is an extension for Google Chrome, allow you to minimize the Chrome to the tray. Working of this too is pretty simple, just install it and later go to your extensions (chrome://settings/extensionSettings#) and click on the ‘Options’.

On the options page, you can customize this extension for yourself, this extension comes with a loads of options to customize. It also allows you to define the functionality of the mouse buttons when clicked on the system tray icon of Chrome. Also it allows you to define the hot keys (known as ‘Boss Key’ here). Another very useful feature of this extension is the ability to define the options in context menu. Have a look at the snapshot of the ‘Options’ page.

The extension works perfectly fine, all the features work great. If you are a Chrome user and love to minimize your applications to tray, this is something that make you fall in love with it.

You can install Minimize Chrome to tray from the official extension page.

So, go ahead, try these extensions and share your views about them with us. Here is a snapshot of the system tray on my system with both Chrome and Firefox minimized to the tray, have a look.

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