Starting a Godot application without a separate window for the main scene

Help Programming
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1

Godot Version

4.7.2

Question

I’m working on a FOSS application to display game controller inputs for streamers and content creators. The approach I use here to support multiple game controllers is to open each input display in a separate window. For the next version, I’m working on splitting off the main UI window so it can be closed when needed, allowing the input display windows to be the only windows open to minimize distraction and lower resource usage.

I’ve already split the code into a separate Node independent of the main UI, and the main UI can be opened and closed without issue. However, since I have the Node containing all the UI-independent code set as the main scene, Godot opens it as a blank window no matter what.

See the image below - the upper-left window is the Node containing all the logic.

AllWindows
AllWindows1920×1080 146 KB

The plan is to eventually have a tray icon, but I would like to know if there’s some way to have Godot run without creating a window for the main scene – or if there are better solutions for what I’m looking to do.

Thank you in advance!

2

Hi .do you want it embedded while you start the app in Godot?

You can do that

3

[image] https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTlogNJSS3e8o9-0YayiiVCTYGl5ph_E3rXnU_QA97ERA&s=10 [\image]

4

Check the documentation page about creating applications:

[…] if you close the main window, all other windows will also be closed since closing the main window ends the process. You can avoid this by minimizing the main window, setting its unfocusable property to true (to hide it from the taskbar and task switcher), then creating additional Window nodes immediately on startup. Remember to provide an alternative means of exiting the application in this case, such as a tray icon.

5

Thank you but I’m looking for something different than embedded mode.

6

Thank you, this looks closest to what I would like. However, it’s not working as I’d hoped. I’m running KDE Plasma on Wayland and the window minimizes right away, but it still shows up in the task bar at the bottom and I can view it again.

Is it possible to have the root node be something other than Window, such as a tray icon?