Notification area icon replacement for Windows Live Messenger 2009.
Windows Live Messenger 2009 forwent the traditional notification area icon of earlier versions, in favor of an extra hidden window that parks itself in the Windows taskbar, displaying the logged in user's display picture and presence status:
While Messenger is open, there will always be one or two windows represented in the taskbar depending on if the main, "real" window is closed or not. Likewise, both the hidden window and the main window show up in Alt+Tab and Win+Tab menus. Closing the hidden window, intentionally or not, will quit Messenger. It's not a particularly popular feature of WLM 2009 - indeed, users new to 2009 have often mistaken it for a bug.
While compatibility mode hacks to a more traditional WLM system tray icon have existed, these have been unreliable and prone to breakage; in my experience, it did initially work, but on some computers, and after a while would routinely crash the application.
09tray works differently. It is a helper app, kind of a wrapper, which manages and reflects the state of a Windows Live Messenger instance. Launching 09tray will make the hidden window invisible, and give WLM its own notification area presence on these newer versions of Windows, freeing you taskbar and Alt+Tab space while still letting you use 2009's newer features including Groups and Scenes.
Run the executable and you should be set to go. Make sure you have Messenger 2009 installed. If you don't, you can grab a copy from either of the currently active community servers.
Double clicking the 09tray icon will start up Messenger, or show it if it is already opened.
09tray does not start up by itself automatically. A good way to use it whenever you're using Messenger is to launch it on startup. Right click the 09tray icon, go to the 09tray menu, and select Start 09tray with Windows to use 09tray when you log in.
09tray also has a few extra features:
- Change your availability status on the main menu.
- Share a window title (multimedia, game or productivity application) with your contacts.
- This feature uses the MessengerDotNet library by Craftplacer.
- At any time you can stop sharing with the Broadcast activity option.
- Works best with applications that have one window per process name.
- Hot links to common on-disk and remote locations:
- Messenger's Local AppData, My Received Files, websites for Escargot and CrossTalk.
- Automatic startup when you log in, so you can set it and forget it.
- Improved stability. If Messenger somehow crashes, just double click 09tray to get it going again.
- The Messenger taskbar icon may represent a different status than is actually set. Closing the main window and reopening it should resolve this.