Launcher lifecycle

The launcher while the game runs

Advanced → Launcher → Hide launcher during gameplay (hide_launcher, on by default; applies at once, also during a game).

• When the game starts, the launcher shows its menu-bar (tray) icon and, with hiding on, hides its window and its Dock entry (macOS's Accessory activation policy; the taskbar API on Windows and Linux).
• The menu has Show launcher (the window comes back; the game keeps running; closing it again returns it to the tray) and Stop game.
• When the game exits, however it exits, the launcher brings back its window and Dock entry and hides the tray icon. A launch that fails early does not hide it. A failed process wait keeps the Stop action and retries; it is not taken as an exit.
• Output and game state keep flowing while hidden. If hiding fails the launcher stays visible; if showing fails the tray stays for another try.

The tray icon is the project's own hunter's sigil (src-tauri/icons/tray-icon.svg, a template image tinted by macOS). Window restoration follows Leari (MIT).

Checks

cargo test covers process polling (normal, nonzero and killed exits, a missing handle, a wait error). cargo run --manifest-path src-tauri/Cargo.toml --example tray_lifecycle is a native smoke test with its own app id and short synthetic processes (it opens a small window and a tray icon: say so before running it). Packaged QA: BB_LAUNCHER_DATA_DIR=/absolute/synthetic/dir makes a packaged launcher use that data folder; empty or relative values are refused.