Gnome 3.26 and the lost system tray

[techge]

From version 3.26 the Gnome Project decided to get rid of the system tray as they felt it not useful anymore. https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2017/08/31/status-icons-and-gnome/

The upcoming Fedora and Ubuntu Releases will already contain this Gnome version. As the Nitrokey App makes use of the standard system tray, we need to find a way to work around. The suggestions of the Gnome Project seem to be more or less "avoid using system trays".

There are ways the get the system tray back, most famous is probably the Gnome extension Topicons Plus. Nitrokey would force user to use such workarounds though which may is not the best user experience.

Another way may could be to reorganize the whole Nitrokey App as a kind of "window based" applications 😢 or by using keyboard shortcuts more extensively. Or ... ?

[szszszsz]

Thank you for heads up!
For now we can mention this extension in the quick start. In the long run a better API will be provided probably (to cover applications like Steam), which we could use. At the moment I see only notifications API to be usable. I though about search API too, though it might be too much work to do and maintain for a cross-platform application. Perhaps this could be done in a plugin.
We surely could display a message when the tray is not detected (link).
The alternative, which is adding main window, could be done too if nothing feasible would be settled in Gnome.
There is a chance too that Canonical will add tray as a default for now. What Ubuntu versions are affected? Is it starting 17.10?

[techge]

Okay, I checked: Ubuntu 17.10 has Gnome 3.26, but Canonical decided to still keep the system tray. Everythings fine here (and wow looks Nitrokey App nice if you are not using LXDE on ArchLinux 😉).

[szszszsz]

It looks like Trisquel (Ubuntu based) is not supporting tray icons. It ships with GNOME.
See forum link.

[ignatenkobrain]

Neither Fedora does. I had to install extension.. So would be nice to find solution for this problem ASAP.

[techge]

Well, I guess the 'main window' solution if 'no tray' is detected seems the best solution for now?

@ignatenkobrain if you still want to use any other program which use the tray you have to do it anyway :( But still there is another solution needed, of course.

[ignatenkobrain]

@techge nitrokey-app is the only app which uses tray on my system :P

[jans23]

Did anybody test the Nitrokey App with the upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 (beta)?

[szszszsz]

I have just tested it with image downloaded from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ (dated
2018-01-29 08:00).
App's tray icon is shown and usable. I do not know have we passed the software freeze date already or not, but I believe Ubuntu team wants the tray dock to stay.
Edit: it is positioned in top-right corner by default and visible immediately (similarly to default icons).
(nevertheless we still plan to integrate with the latest GNOME)
Edit: 18.04 release plan

[techge]

but I believe Ubuntu team wants the tray dock to stay.

This was my perception as well. They could have removed it in 17.10 already, as it uses Gnome 3.26)
Still true that we have to integrate it in latest GNOME of course

[rugk]

Maybe they just extend the workaround a bit longer. Pre GNOME v3.26 also had such a thing in the bottom left.