Windows 7 – Minimize app to tray, restore from tray on hotkey

From a similar question on SU.

PS Tray Factory may be of some use:

PS Tray Factory is a powerful and handy tool meant to flexibly control ALL the other icons in the system tray of the taskbar. PS Tray Factory will help you to manage all the applications that place their icons in the taskbar tray. When you have installed PS Tray Factory, you will forget about the problem of lack of space in the system tray, and will also get an easy, fast and handy tool to handle those applications. In short, ALL Windows users will get this handy and powerful tool at their disposal, whereas only Windows XP users have an idea of it. For the latter, we have made a nice surprise, as the features of PS Tray Factory exceed the standard built-in ones of this OS. With PS Tray Factory you can quickly hide system tray icons and easy manage them.

Shift+RightClick on the button on the taskbar, and click on "Restore all windows" or type R.  It "restores all windows".

Note: "Restore all windows" will appear as a context menu option only if "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" → "Taskbar buttons" is set either to

• "Always combine, hide labels" or
• "Combine when taskbar is full " and windows to restore are combined

"Restore all windows" will not appear in the context menu (replaced by "Restore" only the selected window) if "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" → "Taskbar buttons" is set either to

• "Never Combine" or
• "Combine when taskbar is full " and windows to restore are not combined

To open "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties":

• Right click any empty area on the taskbar and select "Properties"     (hint: "Properties" will be at or near the bottom of the menu; the first item under "Lock the taskbar"), or
• Right click the Windows Start Button, select "Properties", and, in the "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties" window that opens, click the "Taskbar" tab.