WheeMin:
A Tiny, Open Source
App for Instant Window Minimizing

May 16th, 2011

For those of us who spend many long hours at the computer, speed and fluidity of navigation are essential. Every time you move your hands to perform some banal task like minimizing a window, precious time slips away and your flow is disrupted. Frustrating.

The bane of my existence (at a computer, at least) has been minimizing windows. Something is behind that open window, and it’s important! I don’t have time (read: patience) to shuffle around and explore my options for getting to it. I need something immediate.

So I created a tiny Windows program that turns your mouse’s scroll wheel into a minimize button. It’s fast, superlightweight, and does NOT do anything silly like write to the registry or check for updates every 10 minutes.

A tiny Windows program that turns your mouse’s scroll wheel into a minimize button.

When your hands are both on the keyboard, minimizing is easy. You could install some heavy macro/shortcut software, but it’s a lot easier to make a habit of quickly hitting Alt + Space, N. Bam, minimized!

The problem comes when one of your hands (the one that would typically press N) is on the mouse. Then you need to decide if moving the cursor to the minimize button is faster than putting your hand back to the N key. This decision takes time and movement. Forget that.

Some specialty mouse drivers allow you to change the functionality of the mouse buttons, but the generic Windows driver doesn’t. That’s what inspired this program.

I wrote the code in AutoIt in about the time it to minimize 500 windows. It takes up nearly no space, being small enough to place right into your Programs > Startup folder if you see fit. The source code is measured in bytes and the full executable is so small it fits on a 5 ¼ floppy straight outta 1978.

As for reliability, I’ve been using WheeMin2 (the current version) and its predecessor for months without any problems, and have tested it on other computers and mice. There may be situations where it clashes with software I do not use, and therefore cannot test. In those situations, I placed a shortcut which ends the program on the spot; simply press Shift + Esc.

Without further ado:

  • WheeMin2 Windows zipped executable (.zip) – 323 KB – Download
  • WheeMin2 Windows executable (.exe) – 331 KB – Download
  • WheeMin2 AutoIt source code (.au3) – 684 bytes – Download
    (source code requires MouseSetOnEvent_UDF)

Enjoy.

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