CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptjquerynode.jselectron
Vikas Bansal
Vikas Bansal

Reputation: 11730

Electron: How to minimize a window from a rendered process

Scenario

I have a window and it has an add task button that is opening a window. Everytime user clicks on it, it opens a window. I have a button on add task window that minimize it. How to implement this minimize button?

Code

I am able to close maximize window by using the code below:

var winclose = function () {
    window.close();
}

var winmaximize = function () {
    window.moveTo(0, 0);
    window.resizeTo(screen.width, screen.height);
}

However, I am not able to find any function that can minimize a window from rendered process.

Please help, many thanks;

Note:

Browsers do not provide a function to devs to minimize them. but here is a different scenario. Here I am using chromium provided by Electronjs. So, there must be a way to do so as we are developing a desktop application

Dummy Download link: download from OneDrive

Upvotes: 17

Views: 37349

Answers (5)

jtvberg
jtvberg

Reputation: 308

Old thread but it should be noted that the remote module is seen as a security issue and its use is discouraged (see here). It is also deprecated as-is in electron 12 (see here).

Instead, you can just send an command via IPC to invoke the minimize.

From the renderer:

ipcRenderer.send('minimize')

In main:

ipcMain.on('minimize', () => {
  win.minimize()
  // or depending you could do: win.hide()
})

You can also just make a toggle (in main):

ipcMain.on('minimize', () => {
  win.isMinimized() ? win.restore() : win.minimize()
  // or alternatively: win.isVisible() ? win.hide() : win.show()
})

For dynamically made windows (as noted in other answers and as it appears to be the use case) you can use (in place of 'win'):

BrowserWindow.getFocusedWindow()

This creates an issue with toggling if you have more than one window (which is the point) but you can use BrowserWindow.getAllWindows() and iterate if you want to restore a specific window from outside the current renderer process (say by ID). Don't know why you would want to do this but I include it for completeness.

Upvotes: 12

crispengari
crispengari

Reputation: 9321

Minimizing a screen from the renderer is very easy. Using the remote object we can be able to minimize the screen from the renderer. Suppose you have a button that triggers the screen minimization when it is clicked. Bellow is a function that does that.

const handleMinimise =()=>{
    remote.BrowserWindow.getFocusedWindow().minimize();
}

But first of all you have to require remote from electron as follows

const electron = require("electron")
const remote = electron.remote

Or As follow

const { remote } = require("electron")

Upvotes: 1

vboyko
vboyko

Reputation: 179

This works for me: 

const { remote } = require('electron')
remote.getCurrentWindow().minimize();

Upvotes: 1

li x
li x

Reputation: 4051

In case you stumble upon this thread and are using electron vue you can use this.$electron.remote.BrowserWindow.getFocusedWindow().minimize(); from directly inside your renderer.

Upvotes: 5

inukshuk
inukshuk

Reputation: 1457

You can call minimize() on the respective BrowserWindow instance. The question is how to best get access to this instance and this, in turn, depends on how you open the windows and where your minimize button is. From your example, I take it that the minimize button is actually in the window you want to close, in that case you can just minimize the focused window, because to when a user clicks the button inside it, the window should currently have the focus:

const { remote } = require('electron')
remote.BrowserWindow.getFocusedWindow().minimize();

Alternatively you can use BrowserWindow.fromId() to get access to the window in question if, for example, you want to minimize the task window from the other window.

Upvotes: 32

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