SystemTray icon on Mac OSX problem

MacOS

Challenge

I want to have an icon in the SystemTray of Mac in order to sync some calendar stuff.

Solution

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package nl.ivonet.systemtray;
    
    import javax.swing.*;
    import java.awt.*;
    import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
    
    public class SystemTrayApp extends JFrame {
    
    
        public SystemTrayApp() throws Exception {
            final SystemTray systemTray = SystemTray.getSystemTray();
            final PopupMenu popupMenu = new PopupMenu();
    
    //        final Image image = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit()
    //                                   .getImage(this.getClass()
    //                                                 .getResource("/myicon.png"));
    
            Dimension size = systemTray.getTrayIconSize();
            BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(size.width, size.height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
            Graphics graphics = image.getGraphics();
            graphics.setColor(Color.GREEN);
            graphics.fillRect(0, 0, size.width, size.height);
    
    
            final TrayIcon trayIcon = new TrayIcon(image, "Tooltip", popupMenu);
            trayIcon.setImageAutoSize(true);
    
            final MenuItem menuItem = new MenuItem("Menu Item");
            menuItem.addActionListener(e -> System.out.println("Let me do some real work!"));
    
            final MenuItem quit = new MenuItem("Quit");
            quit.addActionListener(e -> System.exit(0));
    
            popupMenu.add(menuItem);
            popupMenu.add(quit);
    
    
            systemTray.add(trayIcon);
    
            setDefaultCloseOperation(DISPOSE_ON_CLOSE);
            setVisible(false);
        }
    
        public static void main(final String[] args) throws Exception {
            new SystemTrayApp();
        }
    }

Solution

Extra information

I came to this solution via this code snippet Before finding this snippet I have tried a variety of options, namely: ScalaFx, JavaFx, Swt, com.dorkbox.SystemTray.

ScalaFx/JavaFx can handle native menu’s via the menuBar.setUseSystemMenuBar(true);. This only puts the menubar on the left side, and disappears when I switch between applications.

When using Swt or com.dorkbox.SystemTray I do manage to have an icon in the systemtray, but the look and feel is not the same as any native app does.

In this example you will get a green square in the screen because then the code is independent from external images. I have included a comment for getting an image from disk.

Remove Doc Icon and from cmd+tab

If you want to remove the cmd+tap java item still visible just add -Dapple.awt.UIElement="true" to your startup script as a VM argument, or you can set a property in the Info.plist as:

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<key>Properties</key>
<dict>
  <key>apple.awt.UIElement</key>
  <string>true</string>
</dict>

Also you can use System.setProperty("apple.awt.UIElement", "true"); in your code but strangely it does not seem to work for me. If you do know how to make that work please leave a comment below.