[Solved] Get Thunderbird 60.0+ to Minimise to System Tray

[BuddhaNature]

I'm just posting this for people going to migrate to Thunderbird 60.0+ and find out that they seemingly can't minimise Thunderbird to the System Tray (even if they attempt to install FireTray to Thunderbird 60.0+). Solutions to this problem are as follows:

(1) Download this fork of the old-time RBTray program: Benbuck Fork of RBTray. (When you're at the download page make a note of the ways you can minimise a window as they aren't all covered in the readme file that is part of the download.) Neither RBTray nor this fork of it require to be 'installed' to your system. Just pull out the required RBHook.dll, RBTray.exe and readme.txt files from the zip you downloaded, put them in a folder of your choice, then launch the RBTray.exe.
EDIT: If you want a package of this that is fully portable then it can (now) be got from here: https://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/rbtray-portable. This won't install anything to your system, on launch it will just unpack the necessary files to a folder of your choice. If you use the PortableApps package just be sure to launch RBTray by double-clicking on the RBTrayPortable.exe file in the root of the folder that you unpacked the package to. Doing it that way the RBTrayPortable.exe will work out the bit-ness of the system you're on and launch the appropriate RBTRay.exe file for you.

(2) With RBTray launched you can now Shift+Right-click on the extreme top area of the Thunderbird window and it will be minimised to the System Tray. To un-minimise it just left click on its icon in the System Tray.

If you think that the Shift+Right-click combination is a bit tedious then do the following:

(3) In Thunderbird go (menu) Tools > Options > Advanced > General (tab) > Config Editor... (button). Once in the about:config dialogue . . .

(4) Search for the preference titled: mail.tabs.drawInTitlebar and set it to false (the default is "true" - double-clicking on the preference will toggle its setting).

(5) Exit about:config, and you will then be able to minimise Thunderbird to the System Tray when you right-click on the minimise button on the Titlebar (no need to add a keyboard press).

Hope this helps.

P.S. I'm on Windows 7, your mileage with this might differ if you're on Windows 'something else'.

P.P.S. I note from a more recent post (April 2019) that someone claimed that RBTray doesn't work for them on Windows 10. Their suggested solution was to try 4t Tray Minimizer, which did work for him. Thought I should add the information here for the Win10 folks that don't have success with RBTray. Good luck.

[keiichi]

With linux, for minimize a program in tray bar, there are at least two solution:
(1) KDocker
(2) AllTray

[BuddhaNature]

Keiichi,

You are right, I should have edited my original post in this thread to include mention that KDocker and AllTray might work on a Linux system to minimise Thunderbird to the System Tray. Here is a direct link to the post where I first mentioned them: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... #p14807682