Reflection: I was too lazy — too lazy to check the official docs for how to minimize to the tray. As it turns out, AIR had this designed in all along. See the official AIR document DEV_GUIDE_FLASH, <Chapter 13: Taskbar icons>. Let me study it now, and put together a Chinese doc along the way to atone. Overview: About taskbar iconsMany operating systems provide a taskbar where applications can display a small icon representing themselves. ADOBE AIR exposes an interface for interacting with an application’s taskbar icon through the NativeApplication.nativeApplication.icon property. AIR creates the NativeApplication.nativeApplication.icon object automatically. The type of this object is either SystemTrayIcon or DockIcon, depending on the operating system.