<img loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources/trayicon.png" align="right" hspace="15" vspace="5" />
In standard Windows installation this task bar status area is located to the right (see graphic below). Ubuntu (GNOME) call this Notification 

area and is attached to the task bar. The java.awt.SystemTray package was added to Java since 1.6 and is accessed through a static method 

SystemTray.getSystemTray(). In our example that follows we call SystemTray.isSupported() to check if SystemTray is supported or if system tray 

is present in the system we are running. 



Please refer to inline comments for details of each item in the code below.



<pre class="brush: java">

package trayiconbasic;

import java.awt.AWTException;
import java.awt.Image;
import java.awt.MenuItem;
import java.awt.PopupMenu;
import java.awt.SystemTray;
import java.awt.TrayIcon;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.net.URL;
import javax.swing.ImageIcon;

public class TrayIconBasic {

 public static void main(String[] args) {

 if (!SystemTray.isSupported()) {
 // Go directory to the task;
 return;
 }

 //Image icon = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getImage(""); 
 Image icon = createIcon("fb.webp", "Sample tray icon");
 if (icon == null) {
 // Go directory to the task;
 return;
 }

 // create the trayIcon itself.
 final TrayIcon trayIcon = new TrayIcon(icon);

 // access the system tray. If not supported 
 // or if notification area is not present (Ubuntu) 
 // a NotSupportedException exception is trown;

 final SystemTray tray = SystemTray.getSystemTray();

 // Create popup menu
 PopupMenu popup = new PopupMenu();
 MenuItem exit = new MenuItem("Exit");

 exit.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
 @Override
 public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
 // Do some cleanup
 tray.remove(trayIcon);
 System.exit(0);
 }
 });

 popup.add(exit);

 
 // Add tooltip and menu to trayicon
 trayIcon.setToolTip("Tray icon demo");
 trayIcon.setPopupMenu(popup);

 // Add the trayIcon to system tray/notification
 // area

 try {
 tray.add(trayIcon);
 } catch (AWTException e) {
 System.out.println("Could not load tray icon !");
 }

 // Sleep/Simulate long running application code
 try {
 java.lang.Thread.sleep(1000 * 5);
 } catch (Exception e) {
 }

 // Update icon. Visually notify user that something was done or
 // needs attention

 Image updateIcon = createIcon("rss.gif", "Updated icon");
 if (updateIcon != null) {
 trayIcon.setImage(updateIcon);
 }
 
 // Just to show how to add an alert/error message
 trayIcon.displayMessage("Alert", "The message", 
 TrayIcon.MessageType.ERROR);

 
 // Continue/Simulate long running application code
 try {
 java.lang.Thread.sleep(1000 * 5);
 } catch (Exception e) {
 }

 // remove the icon. Task is done.
 tray.remove(trayIcon);
 }


 // A handy method to create an Image instance.
 protected static Image createIcon(String path, String description) {
 URL imageURL = TrayIconBasic.class.getResource(path);
 if (imageURL == null) {
 System.err.println(path + " not found");
 return null;
 } else {
 return (new ImageIcon(imageURL, description)).getImage();
 }
 }
}


</pre>




This console application code was run under Netbeans 7 environment. Tested to work in Windows 7 with Java 7. This should also work in Ubuntu if the desktop notification area is present.



Good luck.

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