Since Gnome 44 there is a new UI to show apps (i.e. messengers, sync clients, …) that run in the background. It is supposed to take the place of the tray icons. In my experience it’s basically not working, though.

The only app I use that uses the UI is the nextcloud client. But that thing’s autostart seems to be very unreliable and most of the time I have to start it manually after booting. Could be an issue with the app and not with Gnome, but I don’t know.

I also use Telegram and Element, but both still seem to use the old tray icons that you now need to install an extension for to work. Meaning that with vanilla Gnome when you close the Telegram window, the app is stopped and can’t receive massages in the background.

Is the new UI broken or are app developers just not implementing it into their apps or what’s wrong with the current situaltion?

  • Vittelius@feddit.orgEnglish
    8·
    4 months ago

    Is the new UI broken or are app developers just not implementing it into their apps or what’s wrong with the current situaltion?

    Both, kinda. The new UI relies afaik on xdg-portals to get which apps are running in the background. Therefore only flatpaks should show up; but they should show up automatically, without any tweaks by the devs.

    Also the UI only displays that an app is running in the background. It can’t communicate any type of status information.

    • marius@feddit.orgOP
      2·
      4 months ago

      I have telegram installed as flatpak and it still does not show up. I works with the “AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support” extension, though

      • Vittelius@feddit.org
        2·
        4 months ago

        I could be completely wrong, but the fact, that you stated, that Telegram doesn’t receive messages without the tray icon leads me to believe that they are doing background services wrong. Because the status icon in the tray is supposed to be exactly that. The service itself shouldn’t be tied to that.

      • psychadlligoat@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        Steam has a bunch of runtimes that run in the background even if the main window isn’t visible (due to being closed or in game or whatever) while Firefox is only open when it’s main window is

      • CameronDev@programming.dev
        11·
        4 months ago

        Steam provides a quick launch menu, thats a good enough reason for me.

        Technical issues are worth resolving, but I want the UI to remain the same as the windows one. Its a pattern that works just fine.

          • CameronDev@programming.dev
            1·
            4 months ago

            If they can be hidden, like in Windows, I dont really mind if every app has one. I’ll hide the ones I dont care about.

            The app dock isnt visible by default, so thats a partitial solution, but I’d prefer to be able to access it directly without opening a menu or overview first.