Tray & shortcuts
Most of what Helix does happens while its window is out of sight. The tray icon, notifications and global shortcuts are how you reach it then.
The tray icon
While you are signed in, Helix puts an icon in the Windows notification area — on macOS, in the menu bar. It shows how many drives are up, and its menu reaches every drive without opening the window.
| Menu item | Action |
|---|---|
| Open Helix | bring the window back |
| Open folder | a submenu of the drives that are mounted; pick one to open it |
| Connect / Disconnect Z: — name | one entry per drive, toggling it |
| Connect all drives / Disconnect all drives | every drive at once, without asking first |
| Connect group | one entry per group |
| Exit Helix | quit for real |
A tray action that fails says so in a notification and in the diagnostic log, since there is no window to show a banner on.
Notifications
Helix raises a system notification (on macOS, through Notification Center) when:
- a drive drops, and when the background reconnect brings it back,
- a NAS volume runs low on space (see the low-space warning in Settings),
- a schedule runs,
- Helix hides itself in the tray for the first time in a session.
Results of things you do in the window — connecting a drive, saving a setting — appear as a banner at the top of the page instead, which dismisses itself.
Closing the window
On Windows, two switches in Settings decide what the window's close button does.
| Setting | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Close to the system tray | on | closing hides Helix to the tray, and it keeps reconnecting drops, warning about space and running schedules. Off makes the close button quit |
| Notify when hidden to the tray | on | the first time Helix hides itself each session, a notification says it is still running |
Helix only does its work while it is running. If you turn Close to the system tray off, nothing reconnects your drives once the window is closed. Exit Helix on the tray menu is the way to quit when it is on.
Auto minimize app (see Settings) hides the window to the tray after a countdown on the dashboard. Neither close switch is offered on macOS, where the window stays in the Dock.
Global shortcuts
Switch on Global shortcuts in Settings to control your drives from any application:
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C | connect every drive |
| Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D | disconnect every drive |
- Off by default.
- Three modifiers, because Ctrl+Alt is AltGr on many European keyboards, where AltGr+C and AltGr+D type characters.
- They do not ask for confirmation, and the result appears in a tray notification.
- They do nothing while you are signed out or while the idle lock is up.
- The keys are not swallowed, so another app bound to the same chord still sees them.
- On macOS, Helix needs Accessibility access for them to work.
Shortcuts inside the window
The keyboard shortcuts for the drive list and the Drives menu are listed on the dashboard page.