How to hide standalone app from task bar?
Hi, I'd like to hide a standalone app from the task bar and if possible also from the task manager so people running the app won't be able to open it. I've been browsing around the forums but couldn't find the solution.
Thank you!
A floating window doesn't appear in the taskbar, but you can't minimize it...
Your question is not clear, what do You want to hide -
Max Standalone or taskbar & task manager ?
Or You want that when Standalone starts one can't open any other
application or windows service ?
Starting Standalone into full screen, and disabling all windows key shortcuts,
gimmicks when on moves mouse to side bars, screen corners etc etc
You can forget it, it is of course doable, but only if "users" allow
that someone hacks their systems.
Thanks for the reply. I'd like to hide the Max application so that it runs in the background without the user being able to see it. So I'd like to hide the Max standalone windows, the icon in the task bar and ideally it showing up in the task manager.
@Pedro Santos thank you I'll look into that
Faceless app , so to say.
Making only the app GUI invisible should be ok, but totaly hidding it's existence
seems like a malware...
@Source audio OK that's nice, any techniques on how to accomplish this? :)
Thanks for clarifying Raja. Hiding it from task manager is not as important as hiding it from task bar and not showing any windows. Hopefully I can get that working!
Simply hiding all GUI elements should prevent users from fiddling with anything
in the Standalone app.
You can make few shortcuts to unhide some elements if some settings
have to be made.
Also delete all interfaces from resources and that's it.
Thispatcher object can handle showing floating max window off screen
by setting - coordinates
Going further and hiding Standalone form task bar and task manager
is in that case not necessary.
On osx LSUIElement string in info.plist can hide app from dock and it's menus ...
Thanks a lot all!!
EDIT:
The patch by Pedro Santos above hides Max from both the task bar and task manager, as he said can't minimize it though. That'll be the next step.
For those curious; this is the top level-patch that I'm using at the moment. On load it hides itself from the task bar/task manager, it then opens another patch without opening its window, and once that patch is loaded it sends a bang to "r Loaded" to close this patch. (if build scripts were working I could just use the shroud message to open the patch and then hide it, but this is a workaround).
that behaviour is what "desktop accessories" did on classic mac.
"normal" executables will always force it unless you use a third party sofware or a script to remove it from task bar / dock right after its been created there.
i would also like to know how it is possible to hide something that way (in general, not only a max patcher window / max runtime)
a possible solution for situation like asked here is that you limit yourself to a patcher structure where you only have one main top level patcher which contains everything else. (seems you are already doing something similar with that self-terminating startup screen kind of thing)
p.s.
"minimizing" or showing/hiding a floating window can perfectly be done in max (thispatcher) itself, to "override" most of the OS controlled window features with something custom (and cross-platform.)
So I thought this nightmare was over but seems like it isn't. I don't know how I pulled it off earlier, but right now when I send "dispose" to "thispatcher" in my first opened patcher in my .exe, since it's my top-level patcher, it closes all the patcher windows, also the one I opened with the shroud message. Any way to minimize a window? Think I've spent more 10 hours on this single issue now..
Maybe You need to rethink the approach.
Openning one patcher to open another and both need to be hidden...
By the way just setting float flag off and on will not hide app from
task manager, only from it's simple view, but not from detailed processes list.
I don't have details on what max should do in that context,
but if audio processing is involved, one has to be able to configure the
audio driver, which is different on every computer etc etc.
How do You want to solve that, and keep max app as faceless service ?
Here's a simple approach to hide the window and its reference from the taskbar.
To bring it back, position the mouse at the top of the screen for 5 seconds. Is it enough?
Clarification: it's not really hiding it, just positioning it above the screen, as most people with multiple monitors setups have them horizontally, not vertically...
Thanks guys guess that will have to do for the time being.