Minimize Fullscreen Applications

Most games do not have an option to minimize them which is rather unfortunate if you just have to minimize a game to perform another task but want to continue playing it after that task has been completed. The combination alt tab works sometimes but can have some irritating side effects depending on the game, video card or drivers.

It might take a while before the computer desktop is shown after pressing alt tab and some combinations might cause graphical errors in the game which make restarting the game inevitable.

Game Minimizer (via Shellcity) comes to the rescue. The program sits quietly in the Windows system tray upon execution. It registers the global hotkey F12 which will from then on minimize fullscreen application. A quick test in Team Fortress 2 showed that it was working perfectly, at least in combination with that game.

It might happen that some games disable global shortcuts and that Game Minimizer would fail to minimize those games. Game Minimizer is using less than 2 Megabytes of computer memory and an equal amount of virtual memory which is acceptable for users who need that functionality. The software program is compatible to Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

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