[Feature Request] System tray provider

[GhoulBoii]

Hello! I have looked through the configs and docs but cannot find an option to have a system tray provider. Is there a way to show the system tray in the bar?

[xxami]

worth looking at https://github.com/cairoshell/ManagedShell for reference on this, looks like quite a bit of windows api fiddling 🙈

[GhoulBoii]

Hi! I have tinkered around with the tray functionality in python already. I have made it work with the windows API on windows 10, copying most of the functionality from managedshell. However, I have not been able to make it work with the same method on windows 11. I used Seelen UI's functionality of UI automation to get a basic implementation on win 11.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get the time and motivation to further work on this. If someone more familiar with how managedshell/cairoshell works on windows 11 or a more polished version of the seelen ui implementation, then please contribute. Porting the existing version to rust would also be a great help since I am not familiar with rust syntax.

Win10 Python Systray: https://github.com/GhoulBoii/python-systray
Win11 Barebones implementation: https://github.com/GhoulBoii/python-systray/tree/win11
GlazeWM Discord Thread regarding the same: https://discord.com/channels/1041662798196908052/1267433216084541473

[xxami]

managedshell appears to have two different ways of doing it, the one in your python example, and another way which might be more portable, if i'm understanding it correctly:

• create a window with the same class name as the explorer tray ("Shell_TrayWnd")
• put your window above the explorer one in z-index
• it should receive messages intended to be sent to the explorer tray window which you can forward back down with SendMessage
• read the WM_COPYDATA message to get icon data

if this works it could be kind of cool because it can also work without the presence of explorer.exe, but it would mean the bar has to launch before all the applications call Shell_NotifyIcon to set up their tray icon.

haven't tested it yet though so might be chatting garbage 😅