Developing a simple tray application in JavaFx

      some desktop applications need to be active for a long time or running in the background waiting for some event to occur, like a mailing for example. tray application is the best choice for this type  of situations.

in javafx we need some help from the AWT library because the javafx doesn't have the equivalent of java.awt.SystemTray yet.

what you see below is the the class responsible for the creation of the tray menu. I think it's
self-explanatory.

import java.awt.AWTException;
import java.awt.MenuItem;
import java.awt.PopupMenu;
import java.awt.SystemTray;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.TrayIcon;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
import javafx.application.Platform;
import javafx.stage.Stage;

public class TrayManager {
  public TrayManager() {
     }
     
     
     private TrayIcon trayIcon;
     private Stage stage;
     
     public void createTrayIcon(final Stage stage) {
                 this.stage = stage;
                 
   if (SystemTray.isSupported()) {
    // get the SystemTray instance
    SystemTray tray = SystemTray.getSystemTray();
    // load an image
    java.awt.Image image = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getImage(TrayManager.class.getResource("chart.png"));   
    // create a action listener to listen for default action executed on the tray icon
    final ActionListener closeListener = (java.awt.event.ActionEvent e) -> {
                             System.exit(0);
                         };

    ActionListener showListener = (java.awt.event.ActionEvent e) -> {
                             Platform.runLater(() -> {
                                 this.stage.show();                                
                             });
                         };

    // create a popup menu
    PopupMenu popup = new PopupMenu();

    MenuItem showItem = new MenuItem("Show");
    showItem.addActionListener(showListener);
    popup.add(showItem);

    MenuItem closeItem = new MenuItem("Exit");
    closeItem.addActionListener(closeListener);
    popup.add(closeItem);

    trayIcon = new TrayIcon(image, "tray app demo", popup);   
    
                     try {
                         tray.add(trayIcon);                        
                         trayIcon.displayMessage("note", "Application is active", TrayIcon.MessageType.INFO);
                     } catch (AWTException ex) {
                         Logger.getLogger(TrayManager.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
                     }

   }
  }
     
     public void showProgramIsMinimizedMsg() {
   trayIcon.displayMessage("note", "application is mimimized", TrayIcon.MessageType.INFO);
  }
}

we can now create a basic Fxml application that uses the code above :

public class Main extends Application {
 TrayManager trayManager = new TrayManager();
  
 @Override
 public void start(Stage primaryStage) {
  try {
   BorderPane root = (BorderPane)FXMLLoader.load(getClass().getResource("Main.fxml"));
   Scene scene = new Scene(root,400,400);
   scene.getStylesheets().add(getClass().getResource("application.css").toExternalForm());
   primaryStage.setScene(scene);
   
   
   Platform.setImplicitExit(false);
   
   primaryStage.setOnCloseRequest((WindowEvent event) -> {
    primaryStage.hide();
             event.consume();
         });
   
   primaryStage.setOnHidden((WindowEvent event) -> {
             trayManager.showProgramIsMinimizedMsg();
         });
   
   
   
   
   trayManager.createTrayIcon(primaryStage);
   
   
         
  } catch(Exception e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
  }
 }
 
 public static void main(String[] args) {
  launch(args);
 }
}

here is the result :

note :

the demo application written in eclipse photon can be downloaded from this link :