 <p>All the qt widget classes can be styled via <a href="http://doc.qt.nokia.com/latest/stylesheet-reference.html" rel="nofollow">stylesheets</a>, depending where create your popup (designer, or in code) assign it a stylesheet with the look that you want it to have. You can test stylesheets in designer by assigning a style to a widget using the context menu of the widget</p> <p>After further review, the <code>QSystemTrayIcon::showMessage()</code> call puts up a <em>system</em> notification. Which I don't know if it can be styled. The <code>qsystemtrayicon_win.cpp</code> file in the qt distribution shows a workaround and shows a way of how to find the location of the icon in the tray (see <code>QSystemTrayIconSys::findIconGeometry</code>). Once you have the location you could pop up your own window at that location. I did not look to deep, I don't know if you can get to the location for the icon with the information that you have on the public side of Qt. You might have to go all windows with that.</p>