this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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I also really like GNOME the software but I moved away a few months ago because of this.
As is, the current GNOME is unusable to me without extensions because they refuse to implement support for appindicators. You literally cannot use applications that minimize to tray on vanilla GNOME right now. They have been talking about adding their own protocol for years but that is of no use when things are broken right now.
Important features and bug fixes are always stuck in merge request limbo for years. VRR for Wayland got merged recently after 4 years and it's still experimental. DRM leasing is still missing on Wayland, KDE added it 3 years ago.
The final straw was when KDE announced HDR support last year I switched over because I knew GNOME would probably lag behind by months or even years.
Having only small experience with this I already know how painful it is to have PRs simply not merged forever.
You can check this post post about why gnome has done away with appindicators. Basically everyone has their own and it's a mess, they're very much not bringing them back, appindicators are being replaced altogether by the notification system.
I'm aware of their reason for dropping support but it's not sensible to drop a functioning system and replace it with nothing and then talk about how to do it better for years. That post is from 2017, it's 2024 now and there is still no replacement in sight.
You've missed the part where they have no intention of replacing it. It's bloat. And I agree with them.
Where relevant they've added stuff as a core part of the panel, like recently an indicator for VPN connections. If you want to use an application you can alt-tab to it, like we've done for decades. Everything else is relegated to media controls and notifications. Appindicators are legacy at this point, and they systematically get cut from modern designs like mobiles.
I agree app indicators are a very strange concept, but the alternative is an app using an extension to place itself in the quicksettings or similar.
Like: Syncthing, Nextcloud, VPN apps. How would they display their small info and sync status?
Notifications, you can have the app fire a notification when it's synced or disconnects for example. Gnome is working on better notifications right now. Tablets, chromebooks, cell phones... have been doing fine without appindicators; people just have a hard time changing their habits.
Notifications are annoying and should only be used for really important things.
Notifications are more effective at displaying a change of status than a tiny icon turning red. What's important to someone is gonna vary on a case by case basis, sometimes getting an email is an urgent notification, you can easily turn off the ones you don't care for or go into DND mode.
At least for us, notifications aren't something you can really glance at similarly to app indicators. They're usually text heavy, only really work for longer tasks for readability (which syncing usually isn't), and are always obscured behind another popup for persistent notifications. Persistent notifications also take up more space within the notifications popup, rather than a small icon that you can easily glance at to know what's happening.
As for programs not staying in the task manager, they usually take up less space if open as an app indicator, being able to be passively open but not take up as much space.
The problem is when you allow one developer its own applet, every application wants one, and suddenly you have 15 applets. Applications need to figure out alternative design patterns to achieve the same result or sidestep the problem.
There's this saying, out of sight, out of mind, do you really need to have a constant eye on every application? When there's an actual change you get a notification.
@imecth
Alternative design patterns like PUTTING A SINGLE ICON ON THE TASK BAR SO USERS CAN SEE AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT WHAT A SERVICE OF THEIR CHOICE IS DOING. Like Windows, MacOS, iPadOS, iPhoneOS, ReactOS, Kde Plasma, XFCE, and morr allow?
Do you honestly think an icon bar like this is a good thing? Look at the colors, the amount of them, how they fold because there's too many... And it's the same shit on windows too. It looks ugly, they're hard to click on, most of them don't serve any purpose... I agree appindicators do serve a purpose, but as it is, i prefer not having them at all.
@imecth @cullmann @ohyran @UnityDevice @domi @boredsquirrel @Plopp @soupermkc @minecraftchest1
Of course you have that in KDE, just don't have a panel with a systray.
@forrestguid @imecth @cullmann @ohyran @UnityDevice @domi @boredsquirrel @Plopp @soupermkc @minecraftchest1 You have been able to set the icon size for a while, although the interface is a bit minimal (it is in the options of the systray widget) :
@imecth
To more directly answer, the only icons I would hide there would be the chrome and Pale Moon ones. However, not having seen those two before, I don't know what they are indicating. I would mouse over them or click on them to see what they are.
On Android apps abuse the persistant notification for just that, while app indicators or a specific area to place those would be way better.
I mostly mute the notifications as they are so annoying, but it is very bad to not have them too.
@imecth @cullmann @ohyran @UnityDevice @domi It wasn't true when Allan wrote that blog post, and it's still not true now. If you drop XEmbed and only support SNI (as Plasma did years ago), you have one way to handle it. As it is, Fedora Workstation has an open ticket about adding the appindicator extension because applications are broken without it and Ubuntu maintains and ships it to support a useful user experience.
Currently the ticket is deferred until we resolve updating the SNI spec.
So what, just use the extension. Currently no cross-desktop API for systrays that doesn't suck in one or another way exists, so GNOME doesn't have support for them. If you care that much about not using an extension, implement it for yourself.
Or, use KDE. Which does it all without any extension, even if the current API sucks.
It's not acceptable to me to require a third party extension to achieve a basic useable desktop environment.
Yeah, just because the api is not perfect, to just not support it, is no solution. With that argument you can just skip most interop api, as they all have pain points.
There literally was an implementation that was dropped, and I think it is clear that a PR for a better one would be dropped too.
Instead, GNOME users can stare at an empty panel, while KDE Plasma saves screen space and still has a panel with apps and all needed infos.
Hey, I have it on good authority that apparently users get confused and freeze up like myotonic goats if there's more than three icons in the panel.
What PR? And what about the missing API that satisfies every/most desktops' needs?
And any GNOME user who needs that can use the extension. I don't really get the point, apart from philosophy, which doesn't really make sense here since nothing perfect exists yet, which GNOME seemingly doesn't like implementing. Maybe some work towards that would be good, but I'm just someone using software for free, without paying anything.