Claude Desktop tray icons are indistinguishable when multiple instances are running
Status Fixed / completed
Maintainer reply None cached
Activity 4 comments · opened Aug 16, 2026 · closed Sep 16, 2026
Description:
When multiple Claude Desktop instances are running (e.g., one per account), each instance adds a tray icon — but all tray icons look identical. There is no way to tell:
- Which tray icon corresponds to the currently open/focused desktop window, or
- Which tray icon to close when only some instances should be shut down.
Suggested fix:
Add a tooltip on hover for each tray icon that identifies the associated instance (e.g., account name, window title, or PID), so users can confidently pick the correct icon to close without guessing or closing the wrong instance.
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3 Comments
Example image from tray showing multiple background items. <img width="80" height="31" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/f5506062-a9ea-4c72-9689-f530673ff5bc" />
<img width="225" height="146" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ca92a170-82b7-4ee9-be6d-8a9605215c4f" />
This carries the
invalidlabel, which per the repo's ownscripts/issue-lifecycle.tsmeans "this doesn't appear to be about Claude Code" and comes with a 3-day auto-close. I think that is a mislabel: the subject is the Claude Desktop app's own Windows tray integration, and a maintainer addedarea:desktopto this issue on 2026-08-20, four days afterinvalidwent on.The request itself is unchanged and small. Give each tray icon a hover tooltip identifying its instance (account name, window title, or PID), so that with several instances running you can close the right one instead of guessing. The screenshot above shows the ambiguity: identical icons, no way to tell them apart.
Happy to add version or environment details if that helps re-triage.
Worth adding the underlying cause, because a tooltip would treat the symptom and there is a fix one layer down.
Every instance ships the same AppUserModelID, and Windows groups shell identity by AUMID: taskbar buttons, jump lists and the notification-area entry all key off it. That is why the icons are not just visually identical but genuinely interchangeable to the shell. Set a distinct AUMID per instance (
SetCurrentProcessExplicitAppUserModelIDearly in startup, before the first window or tray icon is created, and a matching one on the shortcut that launches it) and Windows stops collapsing them: separate taskbar buttons, separate jump lists, and the tray entry becomes addressable per instance instead of one of N clones.The tooltip is still worth having, and it is the cheaper change. But the AUMID is what makes "close the right one" reliable, since it also fixes the taskbar grouping that has the same root cause and is not mentioned in this issue.
Disclosure so it is on the record: I ship a paid Windows app that runs isolated Claude Desktop instances, and this is what I ended up doing there, so I have tested that the per-instance AUMID behaves as described. Timing is the part that bites: set it after the first window exists and Windows has already cached the old identity for that process.