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I have a .jar that I run frequently, and I'd like to pin it to the taskbar. I've tried pinning the .jar itself, and I've tried pinning a .bat file that has the command to run the .jar, but it doesn't work either. Is there a way to accomplish this?

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I changed my answer choice to the javaw.exe version because it eliminates the command window issue. However, the cmd.exe is still a very useful trick to have available. – gunit888 Mar 14 '11 at 20:27

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up vote 12 down vote accepted

Similar to MJH's answer, but instead of cmd.exe, you could specify the following path to the executable to avoid having the Command Prompt showing up:

javaw.exe -jar "C:\path\to\your\executable.jar"

If you are the developer of the Java project, you might want to see my answer on StackOverflow as to getting it to play nicely with Windows 7.

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Thanks, this matches perfectly with what I wanted to accomplish. – gunit888 Mar 14 '11 at 20:26
Except maybe a pretty icon, perhaps. I couldn't get this to work (maybe a reboot is required?) but you could try Shift + right-clicking the icon, selecting properties and specifying an icon. I'm curious if you can get that to work. – Paul Lammertsma Mar 14 '11 at 23:22
I was able to assign an .ico file to the shortcut, but it was external to the .jar. Windows 7 doesn't seem to be able to look inside .jar files for icons, as far as I can tell anyway. – gunit888 Mar 15 '11 at 13:59
That's correct. Unless to wrap the JAR as a Windows executable (using Launch4j, JSmooth or some similar tool), this is really the only way of associating an icon with it. – Paul Lammertsma Mar 15 '11 at 14:01
up vote 6 down vote

  1. Create shortcut for cmd.exe

  2. Right click the shortcut and select properties.

  3. In the box for Target, go to the end of %SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe.

  4. After that Target, type a SPACE and then /C, another SPACE and the path to the .jar file.

  5. Pin the shortcut to the taskbar.

You can also change the Icon or click the General tab and change the name of the shortcut if you wish.

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Thanks, that works. However, the cmd.exe window stays open, is there a way to have that automatically close once the .jar is running? – gunit888 Mar 14 '11 at 15:47

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