# Ruby Shoes tray icon?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-shoes-tray-icon/191912>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [July 20, 2010, 4:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-shoes-tray-icon/191912 "2010-07-20T16:20:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![MrZombie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@MrZombie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/MrZombie)\
**Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 4:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-shoes-tray-icon/191912/1 "2010-07-20T16:20:09Z")

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Hi all!

Any way to have Shoes drop a tray icon in the tray, regardless of the  
used system?

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**Author:** ![MrZombie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@MrZombie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/MrZombie)\
**Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 4:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-shoes-tray-icon/191912/2 "2010-07-20T16:54:42Z")

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This isn’t currently a feature of Shoes.

I’ll make a ‘feature request’ note of it in our issues tracker, though.  
I  
generally dislike tray icons, but I can see how they’d be useful to  
others.

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**Author:** ![MrZombie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@MrZombie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/MrZombie)\
**Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 5:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-shoes-tray-icon/191912/3 "2010-07-20T17:05:50Z")

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Not a problem, really. I just wondered if it was feasible.

Any way you can capture a global shortcut?

I’m too lazy to be bothered to write down everything I do at work for  
my timesheets,  
so the plan is to build something that I can reach from anywhere using  
a prompt box  
triggered by a configurable key combination. I’ve been looking at Shoes  
as it seems like  
a program that COULD be useful to someone else than me. I’ll end up  
writing that piece  
of code myself anyway, I’m just looking at what Shoes can help me with  
on that.

I’d much prefer being able to catch global shortcuts than have a tray  
icon.

On 2010-07-20 10:54:00 -0400, Steve K. said:

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MrZombie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@MrZombie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/MrZombie)\
**Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 6:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-shoes-tray-icon/191912/4 "2010-07-20T18:00:19Z")

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One of my main concerns as a programmer is to not reinvent the wheel, so  
I always search before I code. I’ll have to look at the other libraries  
used by Shoes,  
but there already is a couple of libs to bind global hotkeys with GTK,  
I’m guessing  
the same is true for the rest.

I’m guessing a possible approach would be a small abstraction layer  
built on  
license-compatible libraries that can bind global hotkeys, and make  
sure the right  
library is loaded depending on the underlying OS or something…

Duck typing ftw.

On 2010-07-20 11:23:00 -0400, Steve K. said:

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MrZombie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@MrZombie](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/MrZombie)\
**Post date:** [July 20, 2010, 5:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-shoes-tray-icon/191912/5 "2010-07-20T17:24:00Z")

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Hm. I know that nothing like that is built-in, but that would also be  
pretty  
useful…

Shoes itself is a combination of its own private Ruby 1.9.1 with a bunch  
of  
libraries (including gtk). So, if you can do it with gtk, I don’t see  
how it  
wouldn’t be _possible_ with shoes, but nothing like that is built-in  
yet.

If you end up writing either of these approaches into a non-Shoes  
version of  
your app, I’d love to talk about folding them into Shoes.