[Qt-interest] Use of System Tray on Mac

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 02/13/2011 12:54 AM, Darryl Hunter wrote:
> Just to expand on your proposal...are you saying to have the application always running, and to have it in the dock minimised, so it can have the menus that are in the system tray icon (which include launching it, advising of updates, etc)?  Or changing the logic on the Mac so when it starts the main application, it is more embedded in that application?

I don't know the answer to your original question, but according to 
Apples "Human Interface Guidelines", applications should not be running 
or check for updates unless the user actually starts the application.

So in other words, having a "systray icon" running is a bad idea on OS 
X.  If the user wants to start your app, he will do so from the 
"Applications" dock icon.  He does not need a systray icon.  He also 
does not want update messages popping-up out of the blue; those are to 
be issued at application start-up.  Also note that users on other 
platforms also hate systray pollution and tasks running in the 
background for no good reason (update checks are not a good reason.)

On the other hand, I know nothing about the nature of your application 
:-)  If the whole point is to have a deamon running in the background 
that actually performs work, then I guess a systray icon might be 
acceptable.