Today, Skype has become the most popular and powerful platform to people to communicate via video chat with Friends, Family, Relatives and Professionals. Now its being widely used on various platforms including smartphones and TVs too. People even using Skype while they are walking on road. Nowadays is hard to find a netizen who never used Skype to to chat. Since the old version 4.2 of Skype and in latest versions, Skype has undergone many changes including new features and capability. Now one thing those, most of us do not like, is, whenever you click on red close button, it minimizes to windows taskbar, as well as notification area(system tray) too. This was first enabled for Windows 7 and then all latest versions of Windows and this doesn’t make sense. Because when we close or minimize an application in windows that needs to be active/running in purpose, it should be minimized to system tray, not in taskbar. No matter you click on minimize or close button, Skype icon will go to taskbar by default and stay pinned unless you fully exit it.

This behaviour is annoying and often disturbing to some, cause it takes up space in taskbar and hampers productivity. You may also mistakenly open Skype while switching to minimized programs using Alt+Tab. So most of the people should not like Skype being shown up in Windows taskbar when they don’t need it. Because, to stay online on Skype, it doesn’t need to pin or stick to taskbar. As Skype already utilizes and small icon in windows system tray (notification area), why should it remain in taskbar?

Fortunately, this Microsoft product, Skype has made and option available to send Skype to try when you close it. Read on to see how you can do it. You can’t remove Skype from windows taskbar unless you disable this from settings.

How to minimize Skype to notification area (system tray) when closing

1. From Skype toolbar on main windows, click Options under Tools.

2. In Options windows, click on Advanced. Under Advanced settings page, you will see “Keep Skype in the taskbar while I’m signed it” is turned it. Remove the tick mark next to it to disable it as I did:

3. That’s it. You are done. Now you know how to close Skype to system tray. I tested it on Windows 8.1 but this procedure is applied for Windows 7 and 8 too.
From now on, Skype will no more send itself to taskbar, rather it will minimize in System tray (bottom right corner beside clock and date) of Windows when you close Skype window. You will still be signed in and new notifications, texts or call alerts will show up there without that annoying taskbar icon.