Desktop app
Tray & notifications
What the desktop app's tray icon shows, what its menu does, and how native notifications behave.
Closing the window doesn’t quit the app. It keeps running in the tray, so notifications keep arriving and a voice call keeps going. Quit in the tray menu ends it for real.
The tray icon
| Icon | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Owl in its usual colours | Nothing new |
| Red owl | Unread messages or mentions |
| Green owl | You’re in a voice call |
| Amber owl | You’re in a call, muted |
A call takes precedence over unread messages. Hovering shows the details — how many messages are unread, or which channel you’re in.
Click the icon to bring the window back.
The tray menu
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Open Tyto | Shows the window |
| Mute / Unmute, Leave call | Shown while you’re in a voice call |
| Snooze notifications | Silences native notifications and the notification chime for 30 minutes, an hour, or until you turn them back on |
| Presence | Sets Online, Away, Do not disturb or Invisible on every server you’re signed in to |
| Start on boot | Starts the app when you log in to the computer |
| Start minimized | Starts straight into the tray, without opening the window |
| Quit | Closes the app |
The menu follows the language you chose in the app.
On Linux, Start on boot writes a standard XDG autostart entry,
~/.config/autostart/tyto.desktop. GNOME, KDE and most desktop
environments honour it; bare window managers such as Hyprland don’t run
XDG autostart at all — see
Troubleshooting.
Native notifications
The app shows system notifications for every server you’re signed in to, not just the one on screen. Clicking a notification opens the window, switches to the right server and jumps to the message.
What notifies you is decided per account, exactly as in the browser: per-channel levels and community mutes apply to each server separately. Snoozing in the tray only silences the popups and the chime on this computer — unread badges keep counting.
Sounds keep playing while the window is hidden in the tray, and stop when you quit the app.
The window’s title bar
On Windows and macOS the app draws its own title bar in the app’s colours, showing where you are. The system’s minimize, maximize and close buttons stay in their usual place. On Linux the window keeps the title bar of your desktop environment.