Windows Tray Icons Creator

Windows Tray Icons Creator is a simple application that enables you to create custom tray icons for various programs. It supports up to 10 entries and doesn't need to be installed.

Prerequisites and systray accessibility

You can save the downloaded .exe file in any part of the disk and double-click it to launch the program. However, you must have .NET Framework installed. Another possibility is to keep it stored on a USB flash drive to directly run it on any computer with .NET Framework.
At startup, the utility creates an icon in the taskbar notifications area and sits there silently until you call its process. Double-clicking this icon brings up a small panel, where you can configure settings for up two ten different tray icons at the same time.

How it works

It's necessary to assign an icon, tooltip to display on mouse hover, along with the click action. Although this is not mentioned anywhere, you can write commands for the click action just like writing commands in the system Run tool.
For example, you can instruct Windows Tray Icons Creator to run the Registry Editor (regedit), DirectX (dxdiag), Calculator (calc), Notepad (notepad), Internet Explorer (iexplore), or Firefox (firefox), as well as to open a folder.
Worth noting is that the application must remain running in the tray to keep the other tray icons visible. You can ask it to run at every Windows startup until told otherwise.

Evaluation results and observations

It worked well in our tests and had minimal impact on computer performance. On the other hand, it kept popping up an error due to the fact that it didn't identify its default tray icon, thus forcing us to assign a custom icon to create tray icons. Only 16x16 sized ICO files are supported. On top of that, unless you visit the developer's website, it's difficult to figure out the format supported by the "Mouse Click Action" field (there it no help manual integrated).

Conclusion

Although it may take longer than necessary to figure out how it works, Windows Tray Icons Creator offers a simple solution for creating tray icons for various commands.