[Bug]: Windows explorer restart does not respect BrowserWindow skipTaskbar setting

[ben-polinsky]

Preflight Checklist

• I have read the Contributing Guidelines for this project.
• I agree to follow the Code of Conduct that this project adheres to.
• I have searched the issue tracker for a feature request that matches the one I want to file, without success.

Electron Version

12.0.5 / 13.0.1

What operating system are you using?

Windows

Operating System Version

Windows 10 19H2 (18363) and Windows 10 2004

What arch are you using?

x64

Last Known Working Electron version

No response

Expected Behavior

When restarting (or stopping and starting) Windows Explorer, Electron should respect a BrowserWindow's skipTaskbar: true value and not display an icon in the taskbar.

Actual Behavior

When a BrowserWindow has skipTaskbar set to true and Windows Explorer is restarted, an icon appears in the taskbar.

Testcase Gist URL

https://gist.github.com/not-the-car/94ea2fa217d064b23cbe1f5893f3f2bf

Additional Information

I've provided the fiddle above, but all you need to do is set skipTaskbar to true and restart Explorer through the Task Manager to reproduce.

[nornagon]

@zcbenz is this even possible to do? It looks like the current method uses a COM method to remove the icon from the task bar on window construction. How would we detect the explorer.exe restart?

I don't think this issue is "beginner friendly" at all.

[zcbenz]

The tray icon implementation is already doing it, all tray icons are recreated when explorer is restarted:
https://github.com/electron/electron/blob/main/shell/browser/ui/win/notify_icon_host.cc#L65-L67

[nornagon]

Ah, TIL! That's a handy point of reference.

[ben-polinsky]

I'll attempt to build from source and get a fix in. We'll see how it goes.

[bruceauyeung]

problem still exists in electron 17.0.1
os:windows 7, windows 10
any plans ?

[lyswhut]

Any news?

After restarting explorer, skipTaskbar and setThumbarButtons, tray.setToolTip will be invalid.

To reproduce:
After setting the above options, open the task manager, find it and restart

Then you need to re-call win.setSkipTaskbar(true) and tray.setToolTip, but win.setThumbarButtons is no longer valid (although calling it returns true)

OS: Windows 10
Electron: 19.1.1

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale. If this issue is still affecting you, please leave any comment (for example, "bump"), and we'll keep it open. If you have any new additional information—in particular, if this is still reproducible in the latest version of Electron or in the beta—please include it with your comment!

[github-actions]

This issue has been closed due to inactivity, and will not be monitored. If this is a bug and you can reproduce this issue on a supported version of Electron please open a new issue and include instructions for reproducing the issue.