Pin Eclipse Helios to Windows 7 Taskbar

July 15, 2010 48 Comments

eclipse-jumplistEclipse 3.6 “Helios” has Windows 7 taskbar jump lists and can be pinned to the task bar like  a native app but they don’t work out-of-the-box. The jump lists items generate a bonk error dialog complaining that Java cannot be found and the pin this program to taskbar option is missing.

In order for the Windows 7 taskbar features of Eclipse 3.6 to work, eclipse needs to know where Java is installed. That means editing eclipse.ini  to add a ”-vm” argument followed by the path to your Java runtime. Eclipse.ini is located in the same directory as eclipse.exe and the “–vm” argument has to be the very first line in eclipse.ini or Eclipse will complain a big error dialog that says the Java VM could not be found and refuse to start.

eclipse-ini

After adding the path to your Java runtime environment to eclipse.ini, start Eclipse but wait until after Eclipse has finished loading your workspace before attempting to pin it to the taskbar. Once the workspace has been loaded, you can pin the Eclipse icon to the Windows 7 taskbar and it will work like any other app. If you don’t wait until after the Workspace is running, you’ll end up getting a second eclipse icon every time you start Eclipse just like with Eclipse 3.5 and Netbeans 6.8.

This solution is working for me Eclipse 3.6.0 for Windows 64 bit running on Sun (Oracle) Java 1.6.0_20 64-bit on Windows 7 x64 Enterprise.

Via bugs.eclipse.org: bug 314805.

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48 Responses to Pin Eclipse Helios to Windows 7 Taskbar

  1. IanG says:
    July 28, 2010 at 9:46 am

    Thank you! This little quirk was driving me mad!

    Reply
  2. Daniel says:
    July 28, 2010 at 10:20 pm

    Thanks alot, this helped me aswell running Eclipse Helios PDT on Java 1.6.0_21 Win 7 Profssional x64.

    Reply
  3. Andreas says:
    August 5, 2010 at 1:19 pm

    Thank you very much. So annoying.

    Reply
  4. Teodor B says:
    August 18, 2010 at 8:02 pm

    Thanks for the hint about when to pin Eclipse to the Win 7 taskbar

    Reply
  5. c0 says:
    August 30, 2010 at 12:15 pm

    Thanks a lot, the double icons in the taskbar where driving me crazy.

    Reply
  6. Sven says:
    September 8, 2010 at 2:30 pm

    Thanks a lot! 🙂

    Reply
  7. Daniel says:
    September 20, 2010 at 2:22 pm

    Excellent, easy fix! One minor issue is that when you pin it to the taskbar it reverts from the Eclipse EE logo to the standard Eclipse logo. Any insight to this?

    Reply
  8. Anton says:
    September 23, 2010 at 9:19 pm

    Thanks man! Your advice really helped!

    Reply
  9. danda says:
    November 6, 2010 at 1:14 am

    It work, thanks a lot!

    Reply

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  11. DB says:
    February 20, 2011 at 10:10 pm

    Thanks! =)

    Reply
  12. Stanley says:
    March 4, 2011 at 9:30 am

    Thanks a lot! 😉

    Reply
  13. chr1s89 says:
    March 12, 2011 at 11:51 am

    Thank you very much! This was really helpful 🙂

    Reply

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  15. Jeremy says:
    April 18, 2011 at 9:56 pm

    Sweet!

    Reply
  16. Daniel says:
    May 12, 2011 at 5:47 pm

    Thanks, works like a charm. I hated to search it all the way down to its directory and i’ve kind of lost the habit to place shortcuts on the desktop 🙂

    Reply
  17. John T. says:
    May 19, 2011 at 3:38 pm

    I did this, but instead of getting an eclipse icon, I get a generic windows icon. Any suggestions on how to do this, but also get an eclipse icon?

    Reply
    • Brian Reiter says:
      May 20, 2011 at 1:55 pm

      You can right-click on pinned icons and choose properties to edit the shortcut details. There is a change icon there which you can use to browse for eclipse.exe and select the icon.

      FWIW, when you pin something to the taskbar or start menu Explorer creates a shortcut in subdirectories of “%AppData%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned” named TaskBar and StartMenu respectively.

      Reply
  18. Geert says:
    May 21, 2011 at 3:34 pm

    Thanks a lot for this. It worked for me on Win 7 x64.

    Reply

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  21. Johnny says:
    June 10, 2011 at 9:42 am

    Thanks a bunch. It’s weird that this doesn’t work out of the box.

    Reply
  23. Sean says:
    June 28, 2011 at 3:15 pm

    Thanks, helped me too.

    Reply
  24. Travis Brown says:
    August 16, 2011 at 3:07 pm

    Thanks! You rule dude.

    Reply
  25. Niels-Christian Fink Bagger says:
    August 21, 2011 at 7:18 pm

    Thank you so much for this!!!

    Reply
  26. Kozie (@kozie87) says:
    August 30, 2011 at 7:09 am

    Thanks so much for this thing 🙂 It’s much better now 🙂

    Reply
  27. Jeremy Harris says:
    September 26, 2011 at 9:29 pm

    If you’re using Indigo, refer to http://kdelchev.com/posts/articles/How_to_pin_Eclipse_Indigo_to_Windows_7_Taskbar.html

    —- quote —-

    Eclipse Indigo didn’t naturally pin to windows7 taskbar. When run there is no “Pin to taskbar” option. However there is two line solution to fix this.
    Posted on Wed, Aug 31st 2011, 15:40
    After downloading and extracting Eclipse to some directory, go to it.

    Mine is in C:\Program Files\eclipse, there locate and open eclipse.ini file with an simple editor and add theese lines

    -vm
    C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin

    The path C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin is where Java runtime environment is located. If yours is in other place, change the path relevant to your location.

    Note that you have to add the lines one under another! This WILL NOT WORK

    -vm C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin
    Save and close the editor and run Eclipse. Wait until fully loads and right click on the icon. You now have “Pin to taskbar” option, and there is no annoying second icon.

    This works on Windows7 64bit.

    Reply
  28. zerosense says:
    October 10, 2011 at 9:43 pm

    I am getting second icon now.
    Is there anything I can do to get rid of it?

    Reply
  29. zerosense says:
    October 10, 2011 at 9:49 pm

    Ignore this, I got it working.

    When I pin it I see the standard eclipse icon (the purple moon so to say).
    When I unpin it, the icon changes to a gear with the label “Java EE IDE”.
    How do I keep the purple moon? even when unpinned 🙂 ?

    Reply
  30. Octavian says:
    November 24, 2011 at 10:46 am

    Thanks

    Reply
  31. Richard says:
    November 28, 2011 at 1:53 am

    Geez that was starting to irrirate me. Thanks for the heads up about having to wait until the workspace had fully loaded before pinning.

    Reply
  32. Annie says:
    December 5, 2011 at 5:07 pm

    Thanks for summarizing what is in the bug and adding screenshots. This sol’n works for me with Windows 7, 64 bit and Eclipse Indigo.

    Reply
  33. Marjaana says:
    January 16, 2012 at 9:22 am

    Thanks for this! Works for Helios / Windows 7 64bit

    Reply
  34. byc says:
    February 17, 2012 at 5:57 am

    WOW! Thank you so much for this~~!

    Reply
  35. Triguna says:
    February 21, 2012 at 9:44 am

    This works… Thanks… 🙂

    Reply

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  37. Tames McTigue says:
    July 16, 2012 at 7:27 pm

    This is excellent, thank you. Works with Juno as well.

    Reply
  38. Anno says:
    July 25, 2012 at 3:19 pm

    Confirmed with Eclipse 4.2.0 Juno on Windows x64. Thanks

    Reply
  39. kuba says:
    August 25, 2012 at 7:39 am

    Thank you – that’s much better (and faster) solution than the one with changing system variable.

    Reply
  40. Snoogy4u says:
    September 14, 2012 at 2:59 pm

    FYI for anyone else that runs into it. My eclipse.ini had “javaw.exe” at the end of the Java bin path, like this:
    -vm
    C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_33\bin\javaw.exe
    And the “Pin this program to taskbar” option was not showing up.

    Not sure how it got that way, but when I changed the eclipse.ini to just have
    C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_33\bin

    Then it works.
    Thanks for the tip!

    Reply
  41. Tyler says:
    October 12, 2012 at 3:34 pm

    Thanks, works with all versions of Eclipse as far as I know.

    Reply
  42. Totor says:
    October 22, 2012 at 9:48 am

    Thanks !

    Reply
  43. Gernott says:
    October 27, 2012 at 4:53 pm

    It dont work for me 😦 Win7 64 bit, Eclipse Juno, Java7. I tried both Paths:
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin
    C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin

    Reply
  44. Barry says:
    November 16, 2012 at 2:54 am

    Hey Brian, this helps. Thanks!

    Reply
  45. Kim says:
    November 20, 2012 at 8:24 am

    Thanks. Works for Eclipse Indigo on Win7 64 bit.

    Reply
  46. Melinda says:
    December 19, 2012 at 1:26 pm

    Brian, thank you so much for your article. Worked like a charm. Like others who have posted below it was driving me nuts. Thanks again!

    Reply
  47. Russel says:
    April 16, 2013 at 4:12 am

    It’s hard to find knowledgeable people about this topic, but you sound like you know what you’re talking
    about! Thanks

    Reply

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