Windows 8: "minimise" shortcut

Question

How can I minimise the active program on Windows 8, using a keyboard shortcut?

Win+down isn't good:

• if the program is maximised, it un-maximises it before, and I don't want that
• if the selected window isn't the main one, it doesn't work at all

Also Alt+space+N doesn't always work.

Answer 1

This is one of my most oft-used autohotkey tricks. Just aim your mouse at the target window and it gets minimised.

Alt & LButton::

    ; window ID under the cursor (not necessarily active!) 
    MouseGetPos, TB_X, TB_Y, TB_ID

    ; get the class of the window under the cursor
    WinGetClass, TB_Class, ahk_id %TB_ID%

    WinMinimize, ahk_id %TB_ID%

return

Answer 2

If you want to reduce any window to the system tray, I can heartily recommend RBTray.

From their website:

RBTray is a small Windows program that runs in the background and allows almost any window to be minimized to the system tray by right clicking its minimize button.

You can put the program in your startup folder and it will always run in the background. To access your startup folder, type shell:startup into explorer.

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if you want to minimize a window, you could hit alt-space and this will show a menu in which you can press a letter (depending on your language) to minimize the window.

Answer 3

This can be partly done using AutoHotKey, with this script:

#v::WinMinimize, A

It only minimises the active window, instead of minimising all the windows of the active program, but that's a start.