Calibre on OSX - Bizarre window behavior - bug?

[stisev]

Using Calibre v4.23.0 on OSX Catalina.

I am having some issues with Calibre and I'm hoping you guys can tell me if this is expected/normal and tell you what I am trying to accomplish.

Under look & feel - Make sure to "Enable system tray icon". When I close Calibre using the red X button at the top left (https://i.imgur.com/yY7IPr7.jpg) Calibre still shows that it's running in the dock; when you try to click the calibre dock icon to re-open it like other opens, just the menu comes up and no windows. Showing all windows won't bring anything. The only way to get around this is disable Enable system tray icon, but that will close Calibre when you hit the Red X icon. It all seems a bit inelegant.



There is a command for "Hide Calibre" in the Calibre menu (Command H) but there's no way to automate this. What one would expect is that when the "Enable system tray icon" is enabled, it would hide Calibre and the user would be able to click the dock icon to re-open it. This really feels like it can't be expected behavior?

What I really want to accomplish is to auto-hide Calibre window on startup and there doesn't seem to be any way to do this. I love Calibre but it's frustrating having to close its window each time I restart.

Please help!

[kovidgoyal]

If you use a system tray icon the closing calibre will close to system tray. And to re-open it you need to click the system tray icon, not the dock icon. macOS does not play well with system try icons, dont use them there, just use the dock icon. As for how to automate it, you can probably use an automator script to do it, or some such. Not a macOS user, so cant be more specific than that.

[stisev]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

If you use a system tray icon the closing calibre will close to system tray. And to re-open it you need to click the system tray icon, not the dock icon. macOS does not play well with system try icons, dont use them there, just use the dock icon. As for how to automate it, you can probably use an automator script to do it, or some such. Not a macOS user, so cant be more specific than that.

Thank you Kovid. Long time no see! Hope you've been well.

I just discovered that Bartender for OSX was hiding Calibre's tray icon so that explains how to hide. I'll toy around with Keyboard Maestro and figure out a way to hide Calibre's window. I'm assuming there's no opportunity of asking for an option to have it hidden on startup?

[kovidgoyal]

https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/gen...-start-in-tray

[stisev]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/gen...-start-in-tray

These instructions are for PCs right? I was able to hide the window using keyboard maestro but a built in solution for Mac would be ideal.


Thanks!

[kovidgoyal]

No, they work on macs as well. Open a terminal and run

/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS/calibre --start-in-tray

[stisev]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

No, they work on macs as well. Open a terminal and run

/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS/calibre --start-in-tray

Kovid,
BEAUTIFUL! That worked! I input that into an execute shell script trigger in keyboard maestro and I'm set.

Thank you so much for the support!