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Quake mode leaves an empty tray icon even if window is closed #20056
Description
Windows Terminal version
1.23.20211.0
Windows build number
10.0.26200.0
Other Software
No response
Steps to reproduce
- Allow Windows Terminal to run in background
- Open quake mode with hotkey and close it with hotkey, sometimes (not always) a tray icon appears even if I have it disabled in settings (I would like to understand this but I actually don't)
- Oh well let's
exitquake window
Expected Behavior
- Tray icon disappears
Actual Behavior
- Tray icon still there with nothing inside "Windows" flyout
Maybe related to #10179?
Activity
DHowett commentedon Apr 8, 2026
There's definitely something weird here.
Thinking about it for only a few seconds (sorry, haven't paged in all our history here):I am not certain that we should allow Terminal to run in the background with no windows without a tray icon. We're not an APT after all; we should indicate to the user somehow that we're still running.
We'll also add a
Quititem to that menu for anybody who gets stuck in this state.I vaguely recall historically deciding that we should always show a tray icon if the quake window was around. I don't know if we went back on that at one point. 🤔
PrinceLalala commentedon Apr 13, 2026
This seems specific to Quake mode rather than a general tray icon issue.
The repro mentions running in background, and the tray icon can appear even when it’s disabled, with an empty “Windows” flyout. That makes it look like the window/app state and tray state are getting out of sync.
My guess is that the Quake hide/close path is taking a different lifecycle than a normal window close, and the tray state isn’t being updated or cleared correctly in that path.
Could someone confirm whether
Windows Terminalis still running in Task Manager after reproducing? That would help determine whether this is expected background behavior vs a cleanup/state issue.TheConfax commentedon Apr 13, 2026
I am pretty sure it was running in task manager, since I needed to kill it in order to remove the tray icon.
PrinceLalala commentedon Apr 13, 2026
Ahh gotcha, that actually helps a lot.
If Terminal is still running, then yeah this feels less like a stale icon and more like Quake mode leaving the tray state in a weird place.
Out of curiosity — if you reopen Quake mode after this happens, does the tray icon fix itself or stay empty until you kill the process?
TheConfax commentedon Apr 13, 2026
If quake was re-opened via hotkey I think that a 1)_quake appeared in the windows list, then if hidden again via hotkey that's the final state, else if closed with
exitI got back to the empty list.But I am not sure since I was not getting the task icon every time, I cannot really reproduce.
PrinceLalala commentedon Apr 17, 2026
Ahh yeah that makes sense — having a tray icon when it’s running in the background is fair.
What feels off here is more that the icon shows up even when it’s disabled, and after
exitthe flyout is just empty.So it feels less like “the icon shouldn’t exist” and more like the tray state isn’t being updated properly when the last window disappears.
TheConfax commentedon Apr 17, 2026
Mh not really.. the icon should not exist. Since I closed the last window available and I have run in background disabled.
And in a way this makes sense in the release too, since the icon appears in a broken state with an empty window list, this state should not be happening.