Zotero 5 standalone in system tray?

battles_atlas · August 29, 2017

I can't say I'm a fan of making Zotero standalone-only now, given it means for FF users like me having to launch Zotero separately everytime I need it, but I get the reasoning behind it. I hope though more work is planned for improving its integration with the browser to try and minimise the faff this change has created.

Most obviously: Zotero standalone needs to be minimisable to the system tray - so it doesn't needlessly take up space on the task bar - and it needs an option to automatically launch at start up. These changes would basically make it work as well as it did previously.

adamsmith · August 29, 2017

Not sure if there's going to be work by Zotero itself on OS-specific features like that, but FWIW, you can run any application at system startup (google your OS and run application on startup for details; e.g. on Windows you just put a link to the app in the startup folder) and at least on Windows there are tools to minimize any application to the system tray (e.g. https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/27007/whats-the-simplest-way-to-minimize-applications-to-the-system-tray/ )

dstillman · August 29, 2017

I get the reasoning behind it

(It's not "reasoning" — it's technically impossible to offer the full-featured Firefox extension anymore.)

battles_atlas · August 30, 2017

Thanks for info, and didn't know it was forced on them.

I really don't want to be adding manual fixes for what seems to me to be a pretty standard feature of software, particularly one I'm paying $20 a year for, and I'm on Windows 7, not like Linux or anything obscure. Literally every other piece of software I have which does a similar background/storage role to Zotero - discord, dropbox, drive, spotify etc - has both these features.

I really hope the Zotero team do add them.

dstillman · August 30, 2017

Firefox, which Zotero is currently based on, doesn't support this natively, so we can't do this as long as we're on the Mozilla platform (without a lot of work — if someone wants to try to adapt the Firefox extensions that bundle low-level code to do this, they're welcome to). We should be able to support this in a future version after a switch to another platform.

For what it's worth, on macOS it's now possible to close the main window and have the program stay open.

dstillman · August 30, 2017

Issue created.

battles_atlas · August 30, 2017

Fair enough, thanks for insight.

bwiernik · September 15, 2017

A related OS-specific feature that would be really nice to support once Zotero moves to Electron is macOS’ quicklook feature, which Electron apparently has support for:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39922582/using-qlpreviewpanel-with-electron

giacomo.mercuriali · September 18, 2017

the quicklook (or a preview panel like the Finder's one https://images.techhive.com/images/article/2016/03/column-view-100647954-large970.idge.png) would be extremely useful; especially in the case of "Artwork" contents.

bwiernik · September 18, 2017

You can install this plugin to enable Quicklook in Zotero on Mac
https://github.com/bwiernik/ZoteroQuickLook

studiosus · September 27, 2017

Isn't Firefox and thus Z5 architecture similar to that of Mozilla Thunderbird? They have several add-ons for minimizing Thunderbird to tray. Cannot these be used as an example or code?

E.g. "MinimizeToTray revived" (using this by myself for TB): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/minimizetotray-revived/

bwiernik · September 27, 2017

It’s possible that that extension would work. You could try to add Zotero to the extension’s install.rdf file and see if it works (look at Zotfile for an example install.rdf entry for Zotero).

adamsmith · September 27, 2017

I'd be surprised if a Thunderbird extension worked, but I think an equivalent Firefox one might. Also see my post from 29 days ago, though, for system-wide solutions.

william_moreland · October 19, 2017

I tried the MinimizeToTray Revived thunderbird add-on on the off chance that it would work. It didn't.

I'm using Zotero Standalone version 5.

bentle · October 19, 2017

If you want to minimize any window to the system tray on a Windows machine, download RBtray (http://rbtray.sourceforge.net/). Works great.

julou · November 15, 2017

+1 for supporting quicklook for PDFs on mac OS.

adamsmith · November 15, 2017

See bwiernik's comment above. Preview works using the Quicklook add-on

bwiernik · November 15, 2017

FireTray is also available to minimize to tray on Linux. It also claims to work on Windows, but I haven't checked that.

jtphysics · March 20, 2018

I can confirm that FireTray works for Windows. You do need to edit install.rdf to add Zotero as a target application. Thanks bwiernik!

Trunkensoul · December 22, 2018

Hi,
is there an update regarding zotero minimize to system tray with a built in feature? Would appreciate that.

bwiernik · December 22, 2018

No but Firetray and the options discussed in the other thread you posted to are also available https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/323034/#Comment_323034

johnmilojamison · November 15, 2019

@bentle is right that RBTray (http://rbtray.sourceforge.net) works great. Nice that it works for other windows besides just Zotero also. I use a windows machine and couldn't get FireTray working. So if RBTray works, getting zotero to minimize is a low priority, but I'd also like to cast my vote to add this nice feature. Allowing Zotero to minimize to tray is important for me to have it on all the time, especially at startup. And it's always good to attract new users if they don't need to sort through the discussions forum and test out multiple .exe to get a function they expect.

cmbroth · July 15, 2020

I'd also like to request "minimize to tray". I appreciate the hard work done so far. I've had no problems with the software, and that's uncommon.

tedo · May 15, 2021

@cmbrot +1
Specialy for Linux, because Windows users already have it in the form of RBtray.