Clicky Gone Portable

Submit portable freeware that you find here. It helps if you include information like description, extraction instruction, Unicode support, whether it writes to the registry, and so on.
Post Reply
Message
Author
donald
Posts: 561
Joined: Wed Dec 19, 2007 4:14 am
Location: knoxville TN USA

Clicky Gone Portable

#1 Post by donald »

[Moderator note: this is the official forum thread for the Clicky Gone Portable entry.]

---

Clicky Gone Portable is a window hider application, it will also suppress pop-up windows from hidden windows. It can also hide windows in the system tray, as well as icons in the taskbar. Clicky can be run with hot-keys alone, and combined with mouse clicks. In bosskey mode it can also mute the windows it hides.

This application is very similar to TrayEverything, and in my opinion it is better.

Quoting the application's website on features
Clicky Gone's current features include.
1. Click and Hide by holding down keyboard modifiers
2. Run hidden windows application's in the background, i.e Low priority
3. Toggle all windows to hide and show
4. Boss Key support, hide the active window and mute the sound
5. A fancey menu that shows you all your hidden windows
6. Prevent click hiding on full screen applications, i.e. Games
7. Hide menu on applications caption and taskbar icon
8. Process priority menu on applications caption and taskbar icon
9. Hide windows in system tray or completely from view
10. Prevent stuborn windows from showing up after they are hidden, i.e. a long task completes and the application shows another window from the one you have hidden
11. Transparency Effect

Here follows an explanation quoted from the application website:
Clicky Gone allows you to hide your selected windows from view; this includes the taskbar button associated with the application. This utility particularly helps with protecting your privacy by hiding things like your browser with banking details up and someone walks in on you.

There is no need to close your applications if they are taking up to much space on your desktop or taskbar. Each window you hide can optionally be placed as a small icon in the system tray for easy recovery.

This very small application can also reduce the load on your computer by running hidden applications in the background so that they do not interfere with the visible ones. You can also manage an applications priority manually by using its system menu, this menu can be found by right clicking on the title bar or the taskbar button.

This utility is so fast, light on system resources and packed with enough window hiding features that it will make hiding windows as normal as minimizing or closing them.
Clicky Gone Portable vote your prefrence, and download from the application page here.

User avatar
guinness
Posts: 4118
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2007 2:00 am
Contact:

Re: Clicky Gone Portable

#2 Post by guinness »

Good Program! Its also like Minime.

donald
Posts: 561
Joined: Wed Dec 19, 2007 4:14 am
Location: knoxville TN USA

Re: Clicky Gone Portable

#3 Post by donald »

Yes it is like Minime as well though again I believe it is better than Minime as well.

User avatar
webfork
Posts: 10818
Joined: Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:06 pm
Location: US, Texas
Contact:

Re: Clicky Gone Portable

#4 Post by webfork »

donald wrote:Yes it is like Minime as well though again I believe it is better than Minime as well.
Tested out this program today and totally agree: I've been using Minime for years now and love that it's dead simple, lightweight, and the open license. ClickyGone big pull is the click-to-hide trick, but there are lots of other features, a GPL license, and a well-designed interface. The real pull however was that Minime uses 7.4m RAM on my XPSP3 system and ClickyGone uses only 5.3m.

What follows is somewhere between a review and an analysis because whoever put this together shares my tastes in freeware; I wanted to highlight the presence of the right amount of features, options, and design.

"Boss Key" / Desktop Organization

This term refers to a functionality that lets you play games, watch movies, or generally be doing something you shouldn't and, when some sort of overseer appears, you can appear innocent or productive. However, I use these programs simply because I regularly have 30+ Windows active on my machine. So although this can be used for sneaky tasks, it's also an excellent window manager gimmick.

Anyway, this was in the Privacy Tools category, so I added it to the Desktop Organization category (where Minime is located).

Key combinations
  • Click and Hide - I much prefer the mouse hiding component of this program so that you can quickly push a stack of windows out of your way. Much smoother.
  • Show menu - necessary if you decide to make the ClickyGone tray menu disappear, which might be good to avoid incriminating windows or just to keep a clean taskbar
  • Hide Active - just like it sounds, hide the active window
  • Hide/show everything - great for just clearing your whole workspace and looking at your desktop or starting a new task without shutting down any of the old
  • Boss mode - hide window + mute sound
Windows user interface updates - (separate from the window-hiding functions)
  • Fade out inactive windows (helpful to see the desktop, sub-windows, or help focus on the main window). As I have so many windows running, I find this distracting.
  • Add a menu to any application so when you click in the top left corner, you now have a priority, hide, and pin on top options. As I never use that menu for anything, I'm glad to see this program gives you access to something useful for a change.
Other great options
  • Prevent accidentally minimizing "full screen" items
  • Prevents hidden windows from showing other windows (such as error screens or notifications)
  • Puts hidden applications in the background (I verified this in the Task Manager -- hidden apps are set to "Low" priority)
  • Ability to hide the whole application from view (this is more the "boss key" trick to take away any indication yo'ure hiding something. By default, it's Ctrl+Alt+Space to pull up the hidden window.)
  • Add some interface additions
  • Available "boss mode" that will hide the currently active window AND mute sound
Caveats
  • This program doesn't really hide anything, it just moves things to it's own menu system inside a system tray icon. You can however decide how hidden you want this menu system to be.
  • It should go without saying that no competent system monitoring software will be fooled by this so if your work computer is outfitted with that, don't think you're getting away with something.

Problems
  • Couldn't seem to make key combinations with 3 modifiers (e.g. win+ctrl+alt+X)
  • Entering new key combinations in was odd. Had to press them one by one rather than all at once (as with other programs) so it's Ctrl then Alt then h (or whatever).
  • Possible problems with some windows. Firefox for example didn't want to minimize on my XP SP3 system. Will test further
Last edited by webfork on Sat Jul 13, 2013 12:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: (better wording)

robertcollier4
Posts: 39
Joined: Fri Apr 12, 2013 3:20 am

Re: Clicky Gone Portable

#5 Post by robertcollier4 »

A good roundup of these kind of apps:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/Best-Fr ... imizer.htm

User avatar
webfork
Posts: 10818
Joined: Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:06 pm
Location: US, Texas
Contact:

Re: Clicky Gone Portable

#6 Post by webfork »

robertcollier4 wrote:A good roundup of these kind of apps
Cool, thanks

User avatar
webfork
Posts: 10818
Joined: Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:06 pm
Location: US, Texas
Contact:

Re: Clicky Gone Portable

#7 Post by webfork »

Just an update that, although I listed some caveats and problems in the post above, this program has become a constant presence on my desktop and I'd hate to do back to living without it.

---

Edit: program isn't working with my new Win7x64 system ... not sure what the issue is and I can't find a contact for the developer. Program hasn't been updated since 2009. The install and PortableApps versions have all been tested. Think this is a bust for new systems. Sigh.

Post Reply