I don’t like extra unnecessary things on my taskbar and you don’t either. You should try minimizing your favorite music player, VLC, to the system tray. When you do this, your taskbar is cleaner and you can spend less time hunting down open applications.
So how do you minimize VLC to the system tray? Hitting minimize by the close the window button won’t do it. You have to set a preference first. Go to Tools>Preferences>Interface and once there, look for a System icon checkbox. Once it’s checked, hit save and let’s try it out.
Hitting minimize on the VLC window still won’t send it to the system tray! What you must do, which is really quite easy is click on the system tray icon itself. This will send it briskly away. To reopen the VLC interface, simply click on the system tray icon again.
There are also a couple of shortcut features that come with your new system tray icon. If you right click on the system tray icon, you can get the ability for play/pause, stop, next, previous, and also open media. The only thing that VLC lacks in this useful context menu is the ability to manipulate volume. To do that, you must reopen the interface and change it there.
Update
I use VLC even more now because of my podcast. VLC 2.0 and later allows you to simply click on the system tray icon for minimization and maximization. This definitely works on Windows 7 without problems, although in VLC 2.0, the preferences have changed position slightly on the Interface preference pane. The new preference option is Show Systray Icon.
Thanks! needed just that little hint :D
Aah finally figured it out
You have to use the native look for it to minimize to the system tray. Apparently if you use skins it doesn’t work (at least that’s how it seemed).
Cool! Thank you very much. That was what I was looking for ;-)
Great Tip, thanks!
Very helpful! You know yer vlc stuff!
Yes, Jack is right, it seems that the tray icon does not appear to function in skins mode.
Does anyone know of a fix?
Dope! Thanks!
Thank you!
Thanks for that, been bugging me for ages!
Thank you very much for the great tip.
There is still an unpleasant thing. Each time I want to minimize VLC to tray, have to right click that icon and choose the option. The setiing isn’t saved so that next time VLC is minimized automatically to tray instead of going in the taskbar. :(
More attention to this kind of details would be great, but regardless of this the developers are doing a great job with VLC. ;)
Thanks a bunch… was kind of puzzling me! Solved!
The VLC developers don’t have much of a UX team from what I have noticed. Anyway, the minimize to task tray should be saved on close.
Hey! Thank you very much! Recently upgraded and couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong! Was beginning to think they had removed the feature and was almost about to pull my hair out! haha =] Thanks again fella!
You just have to left click on the system tray icon. It does the same thing.
thanks! thumbs up to you :D
Thank you. That was something that had frustrated me for some time.
Do you know anyway to get VLC to minimize to the tray when you press the close button?
Unfortunately, I don’t believe there is any way to do that right now. There might be some information via the VLC trac page, but somehow I doubt it. If nothing else, you could try suggesting it.
Thanxxxx a lot!
Thanks dude, this has been a itch for me for quite awhile.
Can’t believe it was that simple.
Hiding VLC Media Player in taskbar takes two times more memory. When its in taskbar the memory usage is 4 MB and more, but when it’s hidden or the window is opened it takes 8 MB and more. Why is it so? Can it be fixed?
I really have no idea what could cause that. You might want to bring it up in a VLC mailing list or ticket.
Huh… I searched “minimize VLC to tray” and got this, first hit! Very useful, thank you!! Do you do more VLC-for-Dummies, or was this just a lucky break? Keep that taskbar clean, mine is clear thanks to your help!
every thing was according to what u said before i got that simple tip except was not clicking on the taskbar icon :D Thanks alot
Hello Bro…..
It is not working in Windows 7.
Thanks in advance.
doesn’t work. It should have a ‘show in taskbar’ tickbox.
It does work on Windows 7 (VLC 2.0.1). The option is not available, you just need to click the icon on the tray.
How stupid is that? I’ve been using VLC for a year and just thought the developers hadn’t implemented a minimise-to-systray option. They need to put in the preferences to click the icon to minimise it.