Well, Steam etc. not quitting when you close their window isn't caused by the systray. If you remove the systray they will still continue to run in the background, you just won't have any indication of them doing so, except maybe the faster "start-up" time (Or should I call it "opening" time?) when clicking on the launch icon for them. So there the systray is actually _good_ , giving applications a discrete but consistent way to tell the user "Hey, I'm still here, chilling in the background".
yeah, all the applications he discussed have a legitimate reason to run in the background; discord/slack need to receive messages to notify the user, steam needs to download games, spotify needs to play music. Users often want the applications to do these things without needing an open gui window. The systray just provides a graphical method for users to see what background applications are running.
@@notuxnobux I prefer to keep my task bar clean, outside software I am actively interacting with. Things like Steam need to run in the background to continue downloading games and updates, so having it in the system tray ensures that I am aware that I left it running, even while I am doing other things.
@@notuxnobux Ya... X.x You ok bro? you know not everyone wants 5 unused gui applications running when they just want the programs to do their legit things in the background.
The historical reason for chat and email apps etc. to have systray icons is because you want them running but you don't want them to show giant chunky taskbar entries all the time, crowding out everything else. So they close to the systray and you use the systray to keep track of them instead of your taskbar. ...Except if you use an icons-only/dock-style taskbar, in which case those apps' icons takes up very little extra space while open--or even none, for apps that are pinned in place. Taskbar icons have the ability to show various statuses already--unread count, progress indicator, etc. So when using this kind of taskbar, you genuinely don't need tray icons for those apps and they're just redundant with the taskbar icons. What I think we need is for some kind of API that lets the shell tell apps whether a tray icon makes sense in the current context. So when using an icons-only taskbar, apps implementing this API would ask the shell, the shell would say "no" and then when the app has a visible taskbar icon, they wouldn't show a systray icon or silently stay running when closed. They'd just behave like normal apps, without the user having to manually disable the tray icon. However, none of this applies to apps that *never* show an icon on the taskbar, like the Nextcloud client thingy, or Dropbox, or similar background-only apps. For those, it does make sense for them to show a tray icon to make the user aware of their background status. Asking them as an alternative to opt into some DE-specific API is a nonstarter for them since they're cross-platform and simply will not care about us enough to do the large amount of work to write a Plasma applet or adapt to whatever API the GNOME folks want, or whatever. We can't have our heads in the sand so much that we think we can dictate their design. I'd love it if they did write lovely custom UIs for us, but it just won't happen--not until our combined market share becomes 10x bigger or more.
it's like the opposite of the usual story. Typically we're saying "the other DEs will just do the thing without GNOME", this time it's a case of telling GNOME "get Windows on board lmao".
I agree. I think the systray is a legacy for a problem we had on the past. If you look purely on the logical side of things. If you want to keep an application running in the background, you minimize it. That's why the "default" is to have three icons in your taskbar. Close, minimize and maximize, otherwise the minimize button is pointless. You just close the app and it will stay on the system tray. But that is legacy and it will take time (or never) to switch, so today the system tray still make sense because people still use it because apps keep putting them there.
Good comment. I hate redundancy, I think it's very ugly and annoys me a lot. I'd prefer to have the taskbar adopt all the responsibilities of the systray. If a user is not sure whether an app has been closed or is running then it's a very bad app design. X should close it and _ minimize it. Simple! Anyway, we're designing software, not actual physical things that need to be manufactured in a factory in a way that will satisfy most of the population. Just give the user options to set their desktop the way they like.
@@iconoclastsc2 In my opinion based on how I see less tech savy people interact with their computers, some applications SHOULD NOT close when you press X. This may be annoying to you, but to someone who doesn't understand the difference, it may be weird not receiving notifications from their messenger just because they closed the window. There usually is no reason to completely quit applications like mail clients, torrent clients or messengers, and so unless you specifically want to quit (by going to file->quit or on mac pressing cmd+q), you probably meant to run it in a background (unless these applications are actually a front-end for some daemon, but that's besides the point). I agree that it's pretty stupid, but it also makes sense.
@@hikkamorii I don't think that expecting people to learn the difference between pressing the X and _ buttons is setting the bar too high. And in the cases where the X button lets the app run in the background, what does the _ button do? Do they both act the same or is there a difference worth preserving? Also, a little dialog confirming if you really want to quit might solve the issue.
@@BrodieRobertson 🤣🤣 Imagine reasearching your 1st distro and ending up in 30 minutes of content about having icons in the taskbar. P. S. Love the content. Wouldnt have it any other way.
DT's reasoning for clipboard manager being useless in systray is prime example of how he doesn't seem to really understand how systray icons usually work. For example with KDE clipboard manager systray icon you can see contents of clipboard just by hovering the systray icon, and by clicking you can manage history of clipboard without opening (or switching to) application just for that simple job. With quicktray icon all you can do is open another application, which takes more screen space and you have to close manually, and yet he sees quicktray icon as perfect alternative.
Exactly, and it's a great thing to have in all kinds of scenarios! I love the clipboard history and other stuff I stuffed in there!😁 KDE Rocks!🤩 I step on pesky gnomes!
Systrays are the most efficient thing ever. When you have an app with a systray icon, it is very likely that 90% of the functions you may want to use from that app are accessible via a right click. It's just extremely densily packed functionality.
Something I would like to make a quick comment about is people saying if you want an application to run in the background, you minimize it instead of having it in a system tray. However, I think they're not considering 2 things: 1. If I set an application to open when I boot up my computer, a system tray allows me to know it opened at startup without having a window open. And I do have applications open at system boot, namely Discord and Steam. 2. Gnome doesn't have a minimize button by default. And while you can right click and select minimize, new Linux users aren't going to know that. So not only does the "most popular desktop environment", according to DT, not have a system tray by default, it also doesn't have a minimize button by default.
The fun thing is that even mobile operating systems have status icons, in their own way. In Android, the status area at the top shows icons for apps that have active notifications, and there's permanent notifications that apps *have to use* in order to offer a background service that access things like background multimedia playback. So there's a direct relationship between permanent notifications on Android, and status icons on PC.
Even funnier thing is, if you remember Windows XP had those speech bubble style notifications. It also pointed to the system tray app from which the notifications came from. So, you had to have a system tray icon, to be able to show notifications.
permanent notifications aren't necessary for background services, they are only necessary if you don't disable battery optimization and stuff like that
@@BrodieRobertsonwith Android 13, they started including a similar implementation of a system tray in the quick panel, or the multitasking view in Samsung's OneUI 5
One of my favourite features of XFCE, is that you can very easily script your own systray plugins. I've already started adding my own. Couldn't be happier.
@@glidersuzuki5572 A disk space widget is useful at a glance, keyboard, not so much. DT does not speak or type in another language, so there is no reason for him to have that widget. Same goes for a bunch of widgets on his bar. It's clear he does it for "aesthetic" reasons.
Systray is useful. But that does not mean every application / developer makes a good use of it. Just because one application does not make a good use of it or does not need it, does not equal to a bad feature in general. I use Steam and run games mainly through the tray icon, because I do not want the Steam window open all the time. The entire systray isn't actually different from icons you place yourself and give functionality, or the KDE Plasma icons for audio volume and such. It's the same concept. A systray and similar functionality is essential for any general purpose PC operating system in my opinion. It's one of the major flaws of GNOME trying to get rid of it.
Those icons are a small click target, and a constant presence. I use the weather widget in the notifications panel the way you use the Steam tray icon, but it is only visible when I request it, it displays more information, and it's a bigger thing to click. If the system tray encourages developers to make worse interfaces, then it _is_ a bad feature!
I don't think the problem is them getting rid of it. The problem is that they have offered nothing in return. If I have seen correctly, they have removed them all the way in 3.36 and offered PARTIAL replacement in 44. I think they should have first developed the features, and only then made the switch
Yeah, I see the same issues with DT's video. And just to give an example different to both yours and DT's: I love using the systray icons for "active" things (like changing input language, quick access to clipboard history with xfce4-clipman, starting games with steam, etc. all without opening the entire respective application window). If you don't like the systray, that's fine; claiming it has no use - or even that it is counterproductive - is ignorant at best and maliciously misleading at worst.
DT is just another right wing grifter in the YT Linux space. He doesn't care about open source and wasn't even a Linux user until starting the channel. Everything he does is performative.
Another right wing grifter? DT might be wrong on this topic, but he consistently tries to avoid politics at all times. What is it, you don't like right wingers, and you don't like DT, so therefore he must be right wing?
@@IAmTheSlink No, it took quite a wine for me to strike on that conclusion. But even if you disagree (which is fine) he is a disingenuous grifter who barely knew Linux existed before starting his channel.
I'm actually glad Gnome like to shake up things and aren't afraid of trying something new. Yes, this is one of those times when it's not well thought through and i don't think i like the design even with the proposed background apps solution because it now requires at least 2 clicks to get to the systray icon actions menu but they certainly stick to their vision of no distractions on the desktop. I find the systray valuable because it reassures me my messaging app is running and i won't miss any important messages. Thx, that double facepalm expressed exactly how i felt when i watched it the first time lol
I appreciate Gnome trying things as well, that's how we ultimately make progress. But at the end of the day I'm going to run the practical solution that works today instead of the the theoretical future solution that could be amazing
And have they even proposed an improved not-system tray? Because aome of their arguments aren't wrong per say (specifically the accessibility Argument)
Yeah, but they should do real case studies before removing stuff used by lots. See Tray icons, Desktop etc. See how complicated it was to see your input password, how many clicks younhad to do to connect to a wifi - some were fixed or improved later, but in these cases the experiment was awful.
I love my system tray on XFCE. Definitely agree with you that while people are of course free to not use them, they are very useful. Maybe they can be improved upon, but they certainly fill a need for a large number of people.
As an open source maintainer, I have heard "I don't use feature ABC so you shouldn't prioritize/fix it" so many times. I am definitely guilty of saying similar to feature requests I think are dumb, but some features are objectively useful where there aren't any available alternatives. My rule of thumb for removing features is: just because you don't like how something works currently doesn't mean it can be removed/hidden *now* without a feature parity replacement ready. The react native discord mobile app or the chromium steam client, or the steam deck-style big picture mode, or many other applications have all demonstrated the opposite of this philosophy this very well to the extent that I have learned to not update certain softwares (dangerous, I know), use open source modified clients, or just stop using a service altogether just because they forcefully replaced portions of their application with non-feature parity remakes.
Thank you for taking the “use your computer the way you want to“ approach. One of my biggest frustrations with many Linux advocates. Is that on one hand they talk about the flexibility of Linux, but the moment you ask why something doesn’t work, they say “you shouldn’t want to do that.”
I'm always a bit confused when people say windows has a coherent design. It has 3 or 4 different designs for their builtin apps. At least for the builtin apps, GNOME has a very coherent theme.
On plasma, you can simply choose to always hide icons in the arrow menu or disable them altogether. That seems like a pretty sensible solution to me. The only thing I would prefer is if I could disable ones for running applications completely. I know the drawbacks of where did my application go but yakuake for example just shows with F23, if it doesn't show it's not running.
We do have that, yeah. It's been there for a year or two. So in this case you get two icons: one for OBS, and one for the "Something is recording your screen" indicator. So then the OBS icon is redundant. But of course OBS doesn't know that this is the case, and can't!
What if you kept OBS open in the background but just didn't want it recording? OBS is still accessing your screen even if it isn't saving the file, so the indicator is still there.
I will point to the fact that the icon doesn't show which software is recording. It shows which hardware is recording. (Mic, webcam, screen recording.)
No, it does not "solve" things. You cannot control or configure the app from that. And what about the other apps which do something else, not record screen or use mic?
@@ContraVsGigi There is also a mic indicator. I can flip your question around: what if a screen recorder app chooses not to implement a status indicator? But the answer is sandboxing and Wayland. Sandbox the app so that pipewire is the only option to record the screen. And with Wayland, there's an actual security model so apps can't see other windows.
Brodie be like: _pokes at Gnome_ come on, do something... To be fair, they make it really easy to poke fun at them. And systray is one of those things. I like how KDE does it - it's simple, you can toggle each icons between always display, always hide, display when relevant, and disable. You don't like systray at all? Remove it.
But at the same time, as many have said, KDE doesn't let the user know that they can change every little bit of their desktop environment... Ahem... TechTip man... *cough... But, they are making new changes that improve things so I am looking for those. Love KDE, they have done more work than they get recognized.
Frankly, the fact that options to hide systray icons exists kind of makes the point that the systray is heavily misused and full of garbage that shouldn't be there.
Jebus - I wish people who talk about UX actually had some experience in the field instead of substituting UX or "design" for "I don't use or like it." Having ONE place for all notifications is consistency, which is textbook good user experience and textbook good design (ie, good design should not be noticed to be good). If someone's running 50 different applications, it would be very difficult to remember where each application communicates information to the user - the camera example was perfect. If there wasn't a sys tray Linux would not be a viable option as a desktop replacement, especially in relation to MS and Apple. When I starting off, DT was a decent resource - but he's moved firmly into the camp of gatekeeping and conspiracy these last few years.
Your comment just reminds me of all the hilarious UI vs. UX memes I've seen. I'm 💯 with you, btw-even though it's rare these days that I _want_ anything on my computer to notify me of anything, I like that they all show up in one spot in elementary, as opposed to each application managing its own toasts like how Apple does it.
The way DT explains how he views systray icons as useless quick launchers is essentially how they notoriously were used in Windows XP (which i believe he has said is the last version of Windows he actually used and knew how to use) Back then applications would just add a systray and go "hey i started in or closed to the background, i will be in the systray if you need quick access to me" and a lot of those did nothing more than just reopen the application and served no other purpose than that, even chrome had a useless systray at some point that was just "run in background when closed". These days systrays can provide easy access to functions that people can use without learning a hotkey (see flameshot systray as a good example) Me personally i prefer having a systray accessible one way or another because of easily able to glance at it to see the status on some applications like discord, obs, ferdium, etc. But i do not like the systrays that act as quick launchers and do not need to run in the background.
I don't know how you used Windows XP, but the System Tray Area always had full functionality. Your apps always had menus and you could do all sorts of things using the Tray Area icons. That is, if the app implemented it. I should know not only from using this functionality, but I even made apps using the Tray Area icons in that period.
@@ContraVsGigi just because it had full functionality doesn't mean that the majority of applications actually utilized it, a lot of them (that i remember using in that era) just had the context menu of "run in background" and "exit", sometimes there might be a "settings" option there or they used the notification area to just display a notification bubble and nothing else than that. I'm not saying there weren't applications that actually made use of the tray area functionality, but from my experience the applications commonly used here did not utilize them well. Reading over my original message i made it sound that all of the applications back then utilized the systray in a bad way, whops my bad!
chrome still has a systray, it is just disabled by default if you install an extension that runs at all times in the background, then the sys tray will appear, ofc you can choose to disable it
I personally still like the system tray. I also very much like how KDE has implemented it, with the ability to show icons in the panel only when there's a notable status, to always show, to always hide in the pop out box, or to completely hide. And of course being KDE, the whole system tray plasmoid can be removed if desired.
@@anon_y_mousse Because KDE's philosophy of "Simple out of the box, powerful when needed" is really appealing (even if in my experience you sometimes sacrifice stability)
Systrays are a must for me. Think about it many new linux users come from windows where they have systrays and are use to having them for programs like discord. When I switched to linux about two years ago i liked having them and still do as it lets me know things like discord or obs are running in the systray. They are not for everyone but they do have a purpose.
DT is one of those people who finds it convenient to have new windows spawn in a Fibonacci spiral (when is that ever useful ?) so he is really not speaking for the majority of computer users.
@@BrodieRobertson The thing the Fibonacci spiral is 'meant' to do, it's not even good at doing. It's an approximation to a logarithmic spiral (the 'golden spiral') that is meant to fit neatly in one of those diagrams showing the Fibonacci sequence as a nested set of boxes and squares that all fit proportionally, made by putting quarter circular arcs of increasing size in the square parts of the boxes. How it often __looks__ when you do this, is that the place where the spiral goes 'flat' (perfectly horizontally or vertically) lines up with where an earlier part of the curve goes flat in a direction perpendicular to the later part... But if you actually look at a proper golden spiral, __that doesn't happen__. It doesn't line up perfectly like how our brains think it does at a glance. The only reason why it works with the 'Fibonacci spiral' is because it's an approximation to begin with. No.. The correct spiral to use for that, rather than using the golden ratio (approximately 1.6180339887), instead uses a ratio of about 1.5388620468. Or, more precisely, e^(lambertw₀(1.5π)/3). This will actually line up the logarithmic spiral correctly on those imaginary boxes, something that the 'golden spiral' does not do. However, you then have to size those boxes differently, because they no longer will follow the Fibonacci sequence or the 'golden ratio'.
Usually when people say this (just in general) I feel it's in bad faith, but I have to agree here. I find it hard to believe he doesn't do this nowadays.
I agree that a lot of apps need to just close when you close them or be accessible directly through a desktop entry rather than also going through a systray. However, we do still expect Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sound, battery, safe USB drive removal, and cloud synchronization clients to all make some kind of systray appearance, and that includes some amount of interactivity as well. Now as for OBS, on Windows, its taskbar icon receives a red dot when OBS is recording/streaming. That’s similar, and I honestly think it’s better in a world where no one is using virtual desktops. However, given that we have tiling window managers on Linux that require virtual desktops to make sense, the systray approach that OBS has taken is for the better. It’s not like I’m cramped for space on my taskbar anyway (that’s just me, though).
Looks to me like DistroTube is projecting. I love having a system trey. I have a clock and calender in there, the weather, access to network connections, a clip board history, and more. It's groovy!🤠
I totally agree with you and the first thing i do in gnome is installing the extension which provides a systray (AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support) It was the biggest reason to leave Elementary OS back in time.
(Multi-OS user) I find the systray useful, even something simple like checking if a backup is running, quick launching a steam game, seeing if certain apps are still running in the background, etc. I would hate it more if an app like Steam was running in the background where there was no surface level indication of it doing so, at worst it might make me think something might be wrong, e.g. crashed
Hey, Brodie! I have a video topic suggestion: the state of XWayland fractional scaling! Currently, KDE Plasma has a solution implemented since about a year ago that works for most use cases, while GNOME continues to use the old method, which causes all apps that use X11 (such as *Discord* and *nearly all games*) to appear very low-resolution and blurry at fractional scales, severely hampering the user experience on 1440p monitors! I would really love for someone like you to bring more attention to this issue in a dedicated video! Plenty of people have been asking GNOME to implement KDE's solution, but the issues have stagnated.
The lesson to take from here, is that everyone wants and uses his system tray differently lol. The cloud sync icon, is actually pretty useful. It tells you the files are synced, meaning you have multiple windows opened, and save a document for example, you don't have to open the file manager to confirm. I don't like a bloated system tray, and sometimes I use Gnome's background indicator for Flatpaks. However I really love the clipboard one, it's a bit weird Gnome Shell doesn't offer this by default. Plasma's tray is even better. As this also indicates running tasks, and can even eject devices. With GS you have to install extensions.
10:16 I absolutely agree, this and the "user-facing app in daemonized state" are the two things I like about the system tray. There are apps that are useful to access, but don't really need a full window, or don't make sense to take up a full window. The volume slider is probably the canonical example, and although a lot of the system-provided tray menus appear in a settings application most of the time, third-party apps do not. As well as the daemonized state of an app, such as Discord, where having a window open, even minimized, does not always coincide logically with running in the background, and where not running at all is also a valid state (i.e. polkit is not user facing, and also not running is not really a valid state, but steam not running in the background is a perfectly valid state, particularly if you're not playing any games for a decent chunk of time, and it matters to the user)
I like system trays. Since I don’t really use discord on my computer I hadn’t noticed I didn’t have a systray. Now I know I gotta go download that extension cause honestly it's very useful. I got (mostly) used to not having desktop apps. I actually don't like not having them, I feel like I have to go fishing for apps too often without desktop icons but I don't really care too much, if it becomes too annoying (which it's becoming kinda annoying rn) I'll check on how to enable them, but systray is definitely not negotiable.
Totally agree, systrays are incredibly useful to a LOT of users. An interesting anecdote on this topic is the fact that when MacBooks were redesigned to have a "notch" where the camera protruded into the screen area, 3rd party devs came to the rescue with an extension that allowed the systray area to expand to more than one line because some users used so many systray utilities that they took up almost half the screen width at the top of the screen. I would not use an operating system that did not allow me to use systrays (Linux or otherwise)
I like to hide plenty of my sys-tray plugins, because I don't get a notification. However I really like the quick access. As to the Sys-Tray Clipboard, I love being able to quickly check if something actually got copied into my kill-ring. Or being able to look through it to find the bit I need again, without having to Yoink everything before it out somewhere.
IMO systray basically fulfills three different, somewhat unrelated, functions: - Indicating applications running in the background, and providing easy access to them (without requiring them to constantly have a window open cluttering your workspace). - Displaying important applications status, so you can see it at a glance without needing to switch over to it's window. One example of this is whether OBS is recording, as mentioned in the video. Another example is whether the e-mail client has new e-mail. Notifications are fine for something like instant messaging, but I don't want a notification to pop-up and interrupt me whenever I receive an e-mail, I want a passive indicator I can glance at at my leisure. - Quick-access applets, so you can perform certain actions without opening a full window. Some of this is system stuff, e.g. network management, volume, clipboard, and media control. But it is useful for non-system applications to be able to provide arbitrary such applets. Interfaces such as MPRIS and libcloudproviders covers some specific uses, but not the general case. Not all of this may have been originally intended uses, but nevertheless they are all things they're used and useful for. These functions don't necessarily all need to be in the same place, and there may be ways to do it better. But they are all useful, and GNOME removed systray AFAIK without providing alternative ways to fulfill all these functions. And as mentioned, not providing analogues of Windows interfaces makes cross-platform applications harder (we're lucky there is a Linux Discord client at all for example, and we can't expect them to implement GNOME-specific stuff).
The Live Tiles system in Windows 8/10 improved on the system tray but developers ignored it because the bad old way was still available: status updates/launchers from all of the applications a user chose were made available by clicking the Start button, and could be sized and positioned by the user. Gnome has something similar in the notification menu, which is used by its own calendar, clock and weather apps, but other applications can ignore it because everyone installs a system tray extension.
@@ContraVsGigi they obviously didn't exclude each other, but if they complemented each other both would have been used. Live Tiles showed more data, were a larger click target, and were less of a distraction. It was an alternative, better option.
I have to say. I watched DT's video and thought it was reasonable at first. I watched this video, I got the points u made and bought them. I'm not opposed nor agree with the current state of systray icons on Linux. I've used Sway for a while now (with Waybar) and never felt the need for them, until a week ago I couldn't configure the network at my university through nmcli and had to install nm-applet; it made my life so much easier. Even now I don't think we should have them just because users from other OSs r used to them. To me it should depend on the value they can bring to the table and I definitely agree with the argument from GNOME blog about API specialization. To sum things up, I have notification enabled on YT for both channels and I appreciate both, I don't know how but I liked both videos 😝 . Please keep the good work going.
You can also hide the obs window (with the systray) and then start/stop recording/streaming with the systray. I find it very useful instead of using the big window for just a button (maybe it's just me).
1:03 It's not just the fact that there are more developers than designers. In my experience (as a core contributor on a pretty large open source project), there frequently are people with design experience offering to help (they probably get more annoyed about bad design than developers about bugs). But designers often can't really do anything on their own, unlike developers, who can just contribute the changes they want to see, even if it's just small things. This means, designers always need developers with the time and interest to implement the designs, which also means, they have to agree on things, since you can't exactly force open-source contributors to do something they don't want to do (which often includes any design changes since it'll always be a change from what you're used to but it also can just be that they don't like some fairly small details). And ofc, in open source projects, there's almost always something more important to work on than making it look good. And (especially consistent) design also is rarely something that can be improved step by step with little changes, so one can't do a few small contributions here and there. This also means, it's very hard for designers to start contributing and get accepted as part of the team which also makes it hard to seriously discuss or itertate designs so that things that the developers maybe thing are bad can be improved. Overall, this means that even if good designers present some ideas, it often just leads to nothing and they lose interest or motivation again. I think the only way this really works is if they also have the skills to at least mostly implement their ideas or if a designer was part of the team early on.
16:11 - Oh they acknowledged it alright, here's an excerpt from the post: "Regarding Third-party Tools" published on May 9th 2022, under the "*Enhancements to the HUD and Other UI Elements" section: "We believe that people use the aforementioned tools to expand the HUD and display more information because they feel that *existing functions are insufficient* for tackling high-end duties. In recognition of this, we intend to review the most prominent tools, and in order to discourage their use, *endeavor to enhance the functionality of the HUD*. Though it will take some time, we're determined to make it happen─*not least for the benefit of those who play on consoles.*"
gnomes new solution to system trays is having a button in the quick menu settings of background apps. it still needs a lot of work, but i think in 45 and as they move foward, itll be better. i like having it out of the way, and explicitely for background apps, like theres an explicit place for media playback, notifications etc
Reinventing the wheel, a very smart thing. And that with braking everything, because I don't expect them to intercept the behaviour and show the apps somewhere else.
@@ContraVsGigi it is entirely possible they could have a drop down for each app with its menu if it has one.as much as i critise gnome, im glad it gives so much attention to every minute detail in its desktop, and making it an actual cohesive thing unlike everything else where features feel tacked on
I love some kind of hybrid systray like on MacOS. where most apps actually use the dock rather than systray to show its status. but a normal systray is also really useful, for E.G applications that dont require a window, but only a right click.
@@BrodieRobertson The dock by default is centred and larger than the Windows taskbar, KDE taskbar, and GNOME top panel. It cannot be considered incredible if it takes up precious vertical space.
The Mac auto-hide dock works really well. It can also be reassigned to the side of the screen if you prefer. I used to think the dual bar design was terrible until I got used to it. I still prefer single bar designs, but it isn't all bad.
@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 I am aware, lol. Apple just sets it that way by default because it looks nice, except it doesn't when you open something like a web browser... Ubuntu does it right out of the box, with a dock on the left-hand side.
I absolutely love the system tray! I use it all the time, both on Windows and Linux. I find it a really handy an useful feature to have information at a hover an instant control over something with a left or right click. It is much better than having to go through a menu system, click on an app, wait for it to launch, then rummage around in it, find I have to then put my password in again, just to see if a setting or whatever is correct. The system tray also (usually) allows you to instantly blank the screen... People I have spoken to that don't use the system tray are those that don't know how to or the features it offers, but once they see what it can do then they start using it. :)
I don't even use a systray myself because I just do not have a use for it, but I sure don't go around claiming it's a bad feature or anything lol. I think what DT is missing here is that people just use their system in different ways, and for many that includes a systray. Just like for many even bringing up the notion of something like rofi seems like you might as well be speaking another language and all they're comfortable with is just clicking everything, and that's totally fine! I actually really like how Windows does it honestly, because it has a nice looking settings menu with just a little toggle button for everything that's ever tried to be part of your systray and it just works really well imo. I just wish we had some kind of standard at all for how this was all handled, I don't care what it is as long as it gives the user some kind of control over it.
Steam no longer offers option to disable systray. I love many systray icons, but I also need it to be configured. Recently, too many apps abuse it by forcing it without option to disable it. Even worse, some apps open/start to a systray, so instead of clicking it once, I need to click the launcher, wait till it shows in systray, move my cursor over it and click it again, sometimes I need to right-click it and choose option to open.... I would kick in the nuts the person who invented this kind of starting an app. However, those are problems of apps, not of systray itself. I love how sysytrays hide certain icons so I can reach them when needed, but they won't clutter the space on the panel. Systray IMO is a mandatory part of the system. It's a convenience option that shows or hides some background apps, depending on what you need. Plasma is doing it well, Gnome not at all... Guess which DE I am running ;)?
I feel like "minimize to systray" was a lot more controversial when skype did it, because CPUs where more limited, but it's a bit of a silly discussion nowadays. I work on windows, and I personally like for a lot of applications like chats & email when they minimize to the tray. I can see that they are running and I am reachable, and the applications don't have to waste resources drawing a window. One of my big annoyances with thunderbird is that it won't minimize to tray. Especially for those electron apps he mentioned, not having to run their browser window can save a lot of ram.
What I find most confusing is that the reliance on a launcher program for ... everything in a system seems ...... weird. It may be just I use windows, and I use launchers like steam, gog, twitch games thing, to do my games. and keep all the others organized in the start menu, task bar, & desktop. I mean, I kinda want to keep an application open that I use for updating other programs (like steam, EA, GoG Galaxy, etc) but not have it taking up desktop space, or being highlighted on the taskbar either. X.x I am fully behind a clean desktop.. but this minimalist desktop is just. .... weird to the point of 'is you human?'
I like having Discord running but without a window (just a systray icon) because most of the time its only purpose is to notify me. You could argue "just put it on a different workspace" but then when I expand to more workspaces it would be in the way.
I went without for a long time but eventually patched it into dwm because it's nice to have nmapplet up there on a laptop and way faster to turn down volume when levels get painfully loud with the panel app than opening a terminal and using alsamixer.
I love when programs prompt you for your preferred system tray minimize/close behavior DURING installation. And then make it easy to change afterwards, too. Okayu? Nice.
Steam and other "close to tray" apps are a good reason to have a systray unless you enjoy using more time terminating them via console instead of a simple right click, exit.
I'm on GNOME and I like the simple, clean, minimalistic and mobile-like interface. But even I do use (through add-ons) some "systray"-like icons - I have one for the Clipboard manager/history (very useful!), one for printer and one to quickly eject (unplug the right way) USB drive/whatever.
I refer you to X11R3.2. It had no "system tray" per se. There was a "icon try" you could move any place on a display but all windows had to be started with: "command &" . xterm, xclock, xicontray etc. They were all windows. Toms Virtual Window manager made some features too like virtual desktops circa 1994. The current "debate" about why a desktop is $pro_reason|$con_reason to some of us is a bit like Thurston Howell complaining about the lack of caviar on the Island.
I don't mind systray icons from background programs just being there, but I do wish devs and designers made _better_ use of them What I wish out of systray icons is to be able to know at a glance that the program is running in the background (BitTorrent Clients, Steam), that the program is doing something or has unread notifications (OBS, e-mail/messaging clients), and to pop its main window back open when I click the icon, and when its not needed the systray icon just disappears. I like what android has in place for its status bar, for example you can expect mostly any application that records or downloads stuff for you to pin a notification to the notifications panel when you "home" out of it, which by extention also adds a notification icon to the status bar (Bonus: some quick actions in the notification itself!). Not very elegant, but it's far better than what we have here on the desktop in my opinion
great video Brodie, yes systemtray is a must it is the first extension i install on my gnome 45 setup.... AppIndicator, GTK4 desktop icons (DING) and dash to dock lol.. if u look at the popular extension for gnome is usually them, wouldn't that tell gnome that people like these features and i believe they should have it back into their DE, but whatever if they dont i can understand, but im glad we have extension otherwise i would just not use gnome.
signal recently added systray support and i thought to myself "self.... im so happy that signal has a systray icon now. i dont have to have the window open on a workspace and i will know if i step away and get a message because THERE IS A FRIGGIN RED DOT ON IT NOW..."
Three, most Social type Programs have their sys-tray icon show something to denote a missed notification. Four Programs such as VLC Media Player has Media controls when Iconified.
It was probably a hot take to stoke viewership/controversy, I interact with the systray on KDE constantly as it monitors VPN status, power, and application specific warnings rather than reading each window's information manually.
Well, I'm partially agree with DT on this. In my head the better way is not to use systray for not fully closed apps, but keep button in *taskbar* with that information, red dots or some other. Maybe distinct it visually that it represents background task but not minimized window. And keep systray for system gui-less stuff, like network/bt status, sound, brightness, etc.
I think system tray has a place in my workflow with applications that are relevant in every workspace. I don't like it per say and tend to use it as little as possible, but it does the job.
I recently used a portable torrenting app on Windows because I wanted to get an ISO to install Linux with and when I closed the app, I want to say it was QB torrent, it minimized to the system tray. I only closed the app because my torrent was done downloading and I was done with it, otherwise before the Torrent was done I was minimizing it and when I saw that it just went into the system tray as an icon I right clicked it and exited the app completely. The next time that I used this app I went to the menu and chose exit and it did not go to the system tray. I'm glad that there were different ways to minimize/close this app. normally I don't like when things minimize the system tray but I can see how that would have it's use casea and I agree it should be an option, I agree just because I don't like it doesn't mean that everybody won't like it 👍🏽
I love the UX on Ubuntu. I am so much more comfortable in the terminal than navigating menus and trying to find buttons. Most things have a consistent `help` interface and are documented in manpages. Linux is way easier to use than Windows or macOS for this reason. I actually think we'll see more text-mode user interfaces in the future. They're highly accessible and navigating them is straightforward. Additionally, LLM can easily interact with text-mode interfaces.
It seems people, including DT, in this case, often forget certain applications are also made to be run as services or daemons and thus need to have a status indicator telling the user they are ready to receive commands or push status notifications or updates. Steam may be just a game launcher, but it also includes features such as game updates, downloads, text chat, voice chat etc that need to keep an indicator to the user of whether or not the application is ready for them. Same goes for Discord and so on. It works similarly as to what it does on Mac. Sure OSX allows you to have applications open on the dock with dynamic icons that allow you to see application status and so on, but certain software is not made to necessarily have a GUI or independent window, in such case it is fine for them to run on the system tray telling you its status or allowing for a sinple drop down menu of commands and such. If DT is so hellbent in this opinion, he should start using GNUstep or OpenStep, as NEXTSTEP used taskbar/dock icons interchangeably with status indicators/tray icons.
Gnome user here. I use Dash to Panel and KStatusnotifier extensions to get a more permanent systray. I use volume percent, cpufreq, network stats, steam, and discord icons all the time.
From a dev's perspective I am currently making a app for controlling keyboard maps and shortcut keys... (started as a gui for xremap configuration but my friends using windows and macos also want the same thing, so making it cross platform, ) and it should run in the background for it to control keys, but making a background daemon is a nightmare just even in linux... not to mention windows and macos... and it's just really convinent to just add a systray in qt and make the 'x' button just close the mainwindow, program keeps running due to systray and add a right click menu to close that app.. it's just 4 lines of code compare to writing a daemon serivice and dealing with all permission issue...
Honestly, I like TheLinuxExperiment's approach. From time to time try to use a DE that is vastly different from your usual one. In the end you might permanently switch to it or just go back to your favorite one, except this time you will know how other DE's do stuff and maybe try to implement some of their upsides into your established workflow. I used KDE initially, but for a bit switched to Gnome. I didn't like how restrictive it was, however I really enjoyed how theyset up their workflow. If your current workflow works for you, that's good, but you might end up like DT, having your comfy space and not getting why other people do things differently. Tho in this case, I think it's just an attitude thing. In the end, you just need to know that different people do things in different ways.
I think systrays are very useful for mouse centric DEs and WMs. But, as you move to more keyboard centric system, it becomes less useful. However, we tend replace the system tray with our own indicators with custom status bars.
I use my systray all the time; the only icons I want in my taskbar are the windows I'm currently using, because that helps me focus. Email, Discord, Steam, etc. should only be in my taskbar if I'm actively and directly paying attention to them. Otherwise, I want them to hide away in the systray and notify me when there's something to pay attention to.
Your logic is flawed, if you hide them in the system tray (like in windows) then they can't notify you with the icon, and if they are notifying you all the time it means you didn't hide anything and they are constantly nagging in the system tray. The correct thing to do is to deliberately check needed apps in between periods of working. You don't need a system tray for that, yes, hide the app from the panel and bring it back with the shortcut.
@@JamesSmith-ix5jd your logic is flawed, do you know of a thing named "clutter"? You see, people like me hate visual clutter, I am not a minimalist, but I want my taskbar to only have the things I am actively working on. The system tray should only have applications that have a lower priority but are still frequently used. Discord is a great example, I don't want the discord window open at all times, it takes up space both on my desktop and my taskbar. As for notifications, I have muted all the servers I am in, so the only notifications I get are from DMs, which tend to be far more important than server notifications. I periodically check discord, usually after I finish a task or take a break, and I only check my favourite channels. There is not one "true" solution, everyone has different needs, and you cannot say that someone's needs are wrong by basing them on your needs. DT literally made this same mistake, he failed to realize that his needs are not universal. I am a person with ADHD, and having visual clutter makes it hard for me to focus on a single thing. And I dare say that soon a lot of people will be like that, social media has destroyed the attention span of a lot of people.
@@JamesSmith-ix5jd Perhaps I should clarify; I do deliberately check for things I consider "low priority", when I have time. Notifications I consider "high priority" do the pop-up thing, because they might require immediate attention. (Do we still call those things toast notifications?) The filtering isn't perfect, and sometimes a "low priority" thing gets mistakenly treated as "high priority", but not often enough to be a problem. But both priorities of things tend to come from the same programs, like email & Discord. So there's a tiered system: 1. Working on it now: taskbar. 2. Look at this ASAP: toast notifications. 3. Look at this eventually: system tray. And I don't want to know about the third tier when I'm in the middle of something, because I find it distracting. Does that make more sense?
I actually really like how Gnome does it, where the only stuff on the top right is the system icons and any icons that I manually choose to add via extensions (I use a weather one and a clipboard one); I also do really hate apps that pretend to close like DT said. However I don't use Steam or Discord, etc., I pretty much only ever use a browser and a terminal emulator and alt-tab between them, so it definitely depends on what apps you use.
I use Gnome... sometimes I try to go as vanilla as possible so I can understand the workflow concepts better. BUT, the System Tray is the first extension I activate, without exception. Too many apps utilize it, and until Gnome provides a better solution, that's how it's got to be.
System tray is the only widely supported way for applications to programmatically provide a status without having a window open and the only way to have a dynamic list of actions specific to the app. Is there an alternative? I would really like the launcher to show the status of the running app (not just that it's running) and to provide a dynamic actions menu.
Any application that can update in the background without direct user interaction should be a candidate to use the systray. As well as applications that can accomplish their entire feature set in a right click menu. Mac separates these features putting the former in the dock and the latter in the systray; this makes a lot of sense to me, but in practice I don't like it. Maybe it's because I used Windows for 10 years before I ever heard of Linux and then a mix of Windows and KDE for another 10 years before spending more than a few minutes with Mac. Or maybe we just haven't figured out how to rationally explain why those 2 features go together. Either way, familiarity is not a bad reason to keep doing something. Familiarity is efficient for both devs who don't have to figure out a new way to do something and users who don't have to learn to use a new system
discord on MacOS doesn't actually close to the tray, it closes to the dock. I think that's much more useful than a tray loaded with discord, element, etc.
looks like a minimized window on Windows-style taskbars whic people rather like however, so you'd get bug reports like 'why isn't the window closing' 'just all use mac docks then' sometimes the mac dock absolutely sucks the way it handles stuff, like there's no unified demenu or start menu, and it doesn't do window management at all. Also cannot do statusbar stuff, meaning now there's multiple bars on your screen that aren't programs.
@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 I wouldn't say all of them, just a vast majority. apps can choose whether they want to close to the dock or not. some apps like system settings will quit on close
@@supercellex4D yea but it's a dock it's allowed to be like MacOS of they want. I personally think it's a good idea to have the dock be a place for apps you want, tray for utilities, etc.
Shoutouts to France for complaining about the whole Discord systray thingie and the app not closing when you click close in a privacy-focused fine iirc? This was a little while ago, but that bit in particular stood out to me. :D
I use the system tray all the time, and definitally enable it when using Gnome. In my system tray I have discord, tailscale, and syncthing. While I do use the discord icon to launch a lot, I also use it to tell me if I have unread messages. For tailscale and syncthing, I use those icons to tell me the status of those programs to make sure they are working and connected. I feel this is very useful, because I just need to look to the corner of my screen instead of opening the app to see the status. ALSO, the point about there being a difference between the next cloud icon and the obs icon, I think its that obs, DT manually starts and stops, where as nextcloud is just running.
Samsung DeX actually did this the right way with respect to the systray portion of the taskbar. As a window manager user on my notebook computer, I don't have a systray nor a taskbar.
When I close some application I use the Exit menu (if applicable) instead of clicking the X button. Think of using Firefox or any browser with multiple windows, imagine a window is hidden in another Desktop or Screen the instead of turning off Firefox you close that window in front of you. So with sys tray things if you close the window it hide in the tray yes, so you are not sure if that you closed the applications. Meaning, if you want to close an application look for the option the application provides to quit/exit the application. Some tray based applications have context menu for exit/quit the application which is far easier for me than looking for the main window of an application and browsing the menu for Exit.
I use gnome and systray extension, but I use because applications forces me to use. I agree that systray are "useless" in the current state, but unless if all big apps change the way they works, it will be necessary. I prefer something like Android, the app require attention, it show an icon, otherwise, it stays hidden. Gnome has a pretty cool feature that shows when the webcam is used (not sure how/when it was implemented), so maybe isn't a big deal the OBS situation.
Also, DT doesn't know that OBS is recording. He knows it _should_ be recording.
What if OBS crashed?
What if your system tray has frozen?
@@supertrooper6011when does that ever happen? certainly less common that obs crashing
Does systray update when an app crashes in Linux?
I know in windows they dont.
I don't use OBS or a systray... I'm pretty agnostic and uninformed on the whole issue tbh @@Nesdac-k1l
@@supertrooper6011 On a DE, if your systray is frozen, there's a high chance your whole DE would have already frozen, too.
Well, Steam etc. not quitting when you close their window isn't caused by the systray. If you remove the systray they will still continue to run in the background, you just won't have any indication of them doing so, except maybe the faster "start-up" time (Or should I call it "opening" time?) when clicking on the launch icon for them.
So there the systray is actually _good_ , giving applications a discrete but consistent way to tell the user "Hey, I'm still here, chilling in the background".
Yes, I noticed this on my system. Pressing the X "minimizes" Steam, you have to click the Steam menu and click Quit for it to actually close
It shouldn't run in the background to begin with. Minimize the application if you want it to continue running.
yeah, all the applications he discussed have a legitimate reason to run in the background; discord/slack need to receive messages to notify the user, steam needs to download games, spotify needs to play music. Users often want the applications to do these things without needing an open gui window.
The systray just provides a graphical method for users to see what background applications are running.
@@notuxnobux I prefer to keep my task bar clean, outside software I am actively interacting with. Things like Steam need to run in the background to continue downloading games and updates, so having it in the system tray ensures that I am aware that I left it running, even while I am doing other things.
@@notuxnobux Ya... X.x You ok bro? you know not everyone wants 5 unused gui applications running when they just want the programs to do their legit things in the background.
The historical reason for chat and email apps etc. to have systray icons is because you want them running but you don't want them to show giant chunky taskbar entries all the time, crowding out everything else. So they close to the systray and you use the systray to keep track of them instead of your taskbar.
...Except if you use an icons-only/dock-style taskbar, in which case those apps' icons takes up very little extra space while open--or even none, for apps that are pinned in place. Taskbar icons have the ability to show various statuses already--unread count, progress indicator, etc. So when using this kind of taskbar, you genuinely don't need tray icons for those apps and they're just redundant with the taskbar icons.
What I think we need is for some kind of API that lets the shell tell apps whether a tray icon makes sense in the current context. So when using an icons-only taskbar, apps implementing this API would ask the shell, the shell would say "no" and then when the app has a visible taskbar icon, they wouldn't show a systray icon or silently stay running when closed. They'd just behave like normal apps, without the user having to manually disable the tray icon.
However, none of this applies to apps that *never* show an icon on the taskbar, like the Nextcloud client thingy, or Dropbox, or similar background-only apps. For those, it does make sense for them to show a tray icon to make the user aware of their background status. Asking them as an alternative to opt into some DE-specific API is a nonstarter for them since they're cross-platform and simply will not care about us enough to do the large amount of work to write a Plasma applet or adapt to whatever API the GNOME folks want, or whatever. We can't have our heads in the sand so much that we think we can dictate their design. I'd love it if they did write lovely custom UIs for us, but it just won't happen--not until our combined market share becomes 10x bigger or more.
it's like the opposite of the usual story. Typically we're saying "the other DEs will just do the thing without GNOME", this time it's a case of telling GNOME "get Windows on board lmao".
I agree. I think the systray is a legacy for a problem we had on the past. If you look purely on the logical side of things. If you want to keep an application running in the background, you minimize it. That's why the "default" is to have three icons in your taskbar. Close, minimize and maximize, otherwise the minimize button is pointless. You just close the app and it will stay on the system tray.
But that is legacy and it will take time (or never) to switch, so today the system tray still make sense because people still use it because apps keep putting them there.
Good comment. I hate redundancy, I think it's very ugly and annoys me a lot. I'd prefer to have the taskbar adopt all the responsibilities of the systray.
If a user is not sure whether an app has been closed or is running then it's a very bad app design. X should close it and _ minimize it. Simple!
Anyway, we're designing software, not actual physical things that need to be manufactured in a factory in a way that will satisfy most of the population. Just give the user options to set their desktop the way they like.
@@iconoclastsc2 In my opinion based on how I see less tech savy people interact with their computers, some applications SHOULD NOT close when you press X. This may be annoying to you, but to someone who doesn't understand the difference, it may be weird not receiving notifications from their messenger just because they closed the window. There usually is no reason to completely quit applications like mail clients, torrent clients or messengers, and so unless you specifically want to quit (by going to file->quit or on mac pressing cmd+q), you probably meant to run it in a background (unless these applications are actually a front-end for some daemon, but that's besides the point). I agree that it's pretty stupid, but it also makes sense.
@@hikkamorii I don't think that expecting people to learn the difference between pressing the X and _ buttons is setting the bar too high.
And in the cases where the X button lets the app run in the background, what does the _ button do? Do they both act the same or is there a difference worth preserving?
Also, a little dialog confirming if you really want to quit might solve the issue.
Now we know what Brodie does after recording 😳
I mean, the coomer figurines in the background were a dead giveaway
What a crazy revelation you've just had lol
That's also my only take away from this video lol
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Nothing wrong with big tiddy anime catgirls, though.
This is the most linux debate ever.
True and real
@@BrodieRobertson 🤣🤣 Imagine reasearching your 1st distro and ending up in 30 minutes of content about having icons in the taskbar.
P. S. Love the content. Wouldnt have it any other way.
getting up there with the systemd debate
DT's reasoning for clipboard manager being useless in systray is prime example of how he doesn't seem to really understand how systray icons usually work. For example with KDE clipboard manager systray icon you can see contents of clipboard just by hovering the systray icon, and by clicking you can manage history of clipboard without opening (or switching to) application just for that simple job. With quicktray icon all you can do is open another application, which takes more screen space and you have to close manually, and yet he sees quicktray icon as perfect alternative.
Exactly, and it's a great thing to have in all kinds of scenarios! I love the clipboard history and other stuff I stuffed in there!😁 KDE Rocks!🤩 I step on pesky gnomes!
Systrays are the most efficient thing ever. When you have an app with a systray icon, it is very likely that 90% of the functions you may want to use from that app are accessible via a right click. It's just extremely densily packed functionality.
Something I would like to make a quick comment about is people saying if you want an application to run in the background, you minimize it instead of having it in a system tray. However, I think they're not considering 2 things:
1. If I set an application to open when I boot up my computer, a system tray allows me to know it opened at startup without having a window open. And I do have applications open at system boot, namely Discord and Steam.
2. Gnome doesn't have a minimize button by default. And while you can right click and select minimize, new Linux users aren't going to know that. So not only does the "most popular desktop environment", according to DT, not have a system tray by default, it also doesn't have a minimize button by default.
The fun thing is that even mobile operating systems have status icons, in their own way. In Android, the status area at the top shows icons for apps that have active notifications, and there's permanent notifications that apps *have to use* in order to offer a background service that access things like background multimedia playback. So there's a direct relationship between permanent notifications on Android, and status icons on PC.
Android doesn't have a systray in the same way but nowadays with complex styled notifications it's basically the same
Even funnier thing is, if you remember Windows XP had those speech bubble style notifications. It also pointed to the system tray app from which the notifications came from. So, you had to have a system tray icon, to be able to show notifications.
@@klabence Yep I have used that API in my code. There's a new API now but the old one still works.
permanent notifications aren't necessary for background services, they are only necessary if you don't disable battery optimization and stuff like that
@@BrodieRobertsonwith Android 13, they started including a similar implementation of a system tray in the quick panel, or the multitasking view in Samsung's OneUI 5
One of my favourite features of XFCE, is that you can very easily script your own systray plugins. I've already started adding my own. Couldn't be happier.
Bro complains about the obs recording icon being useless and then has 50% of his bar taken up by shit like Keyboard layout and current disk space 🤣
What do you mean? Keyboard layout and disk space are super useful
@@glidersuzuki5572 A disk space widget is useful at a glance, keyboard, not so much. DT does not speak or type in another language, so there is no reason for him to have that widget. Same goes for a bunch of widgets on his bar. It's clear he does it for "aesthetic" reasons.
Systray is useful. But that does not mean every application / developer makes a good use of it. Just because one application does not make a good use of it or does not need it, does not equal to a bad feature in general. I use Steam and run games mainly through the tray icon, because I do not want the Steam window open all the time. The entire systray isn't actually different from icons you place yourself and give functionality, or the KDE Plasma icons for audio volume and such. It's the same concept.
A systray and similar functionality is essential for any general purpose PC operating system in my opinion. It's one of the major flaws of GNOME trying to get rid of it.
Those icons are a small click target, and a constant presence. I use the weather widget in the notifications panel the way you use the Steam tray icon, but it is only visible when I request it, it displays more information, and it's a bigger thing to click. If the system tray encourages developers to make worse interfaces, then it _is_ a bad feature!
I don't think the problem is them getting rid of it. The problem is that they have offered nothing in return. If I have seen correctly, they have removed them all the way in 3.36 and offered PARTIAL replacement in 44. I think they should have first developed the features, and only then made the switch
Yeah, I see the same issues with DT's video. And just to give an example different to both yours and DT's: I love using the systray icons for "active" things (like changing input language, quick access to clipboard history with xfce4-clipman, starting games with steam, etc. all without opening the entire respective application window).
If you don't like the systray, that's fine; claiming it has no use - or even that it is counterproductive - is ignorant at best and maliciously misleading at worst.
DT is just another right wing grifter in the YT Linux space. He doesn't care about open source and wasn't even a Linux user until starting the channel. Everything he does is performative.
@@orbatos Nah, DT has some great content, but he also has some controversial / bad opinions. Linux UA-camrs ain't perfect!
Another right wing grifter? DT might be wrong on this topic, but he consistently tries to avoid politics at all times. What is it, you don't like right wingers, and you don't like DT, so therefore he must be right wing?
@@IAmTheSlink No, it took quite a wine for me to strike on that conclusion. But even if you disagree (which is fine) he is a disingenuous grifter who barely knew Linux existed before starting his channel.
I'm actually glad Gnome like to shake up things and aren't afraid of trying something new. Yes, this is one of those times when it's not well thought through and i don't think i like the design even with the proposed background apps solution because it now requires at least 2 clicks to get to the systray icon actions menu but they certainly stick to their vision of no distractions on the desktop.
I find the systray valuable because it reassures me my messaging app is running and i won't miss any important messages.
Thx, that double facepalm expressed exactly how i felt when i watched it the first time lol
I appreciate Gnome trying things as well, that's how we ultimately make progress. But at the end of the day I'm going to run the practical solution that works today instead of the the theoretical future solution that could be amazing
And have they even proposed an improved not-system tray? Because aome of their arguments aren't wrong per say (specifically the accessibility Argument)
@@keit99they've had an alternative for ages - the widgets in the notifications menu.
... a bald take!@@BrodieRobertson
Yeah, but they should do real case studies before removing stuff used by lots. See Tray icons, Desktop etc. See how complicated it was to see your input password, how many clicks younhad to do to connect to a wifi - some were fixed or improved later, but in these cases the experiment was awful.
I love my system tray on XFCE.
Definitely agree with you that while people are of course free to not use them, they are very useful.
Maybe they can be improved upon, but they certainly fill a need for a large number of people.
As an open source maintainer, I have heard "I don't use feature ABC so you shouldn't prioritize/fix it" so many times. I am definitely guilty of saying similar to feature requests I think are dumb, but some features are objectively useful where there aren't any available alternatives.
My rule of thumb for removing features is: just because you don't like how something works currently doesn't mean it can be removed/hidden *now* without a feature parity replacement ready. The react native discord mobile app or the chromium steam client, or the steam deck-style big picture mode, or many other applications have all demonstrated the opposite of this philosophy this very well to the extent that I have learned to not update certain softwares (dangerous, I know), use open source modified clients, or just stop using a service altogether just because they forcefully replaced portions of their application with non-feature parity remakes.
Thank you for taking the “use your computer the way you want to“ approach. One of my biggest frustrations with many Linux advocates. Is that on one hand they talk about the flexibility of Linux, but the moment you ask why something doesn’t work, they say “you shouldn’t want to do that.”
I'm always a bit confused when people say windows has a coherent design. It has 3 or 4 different designs for their builtin apps. At least for the builtin apps, GNOME has a very coherent theme.
On plasma, you can simply choose to always hide icons in the arrow menu or disable them altogether.
That seems like a pretty sensible solution to me. The only thing I would prefer is if I could disable ones for running applications completely. I know the drawbacks of where did my application go but yakuake for example just shows with F23, if it doesn't show it's not running.
What about that firewalld configuration tray icon that won't close with a right click on the icon or be permenantely hidden in KDE Plasma?
2:54 Gnome solves this particular issue by having an indicator when something is capturing your screen using pipewire. Edit: KDE implements this too.
We do have that, yeah. It's been there for a year or two. So in this case you get two icons: one for OBS, and one for the "Something is recording your screen" indicator. So then the OBS icon is redundant. But of course OBS doesn't know that this is the case, and can't!
What if you kept OBS open in the background but just didn't want it recording? OBS is still accessing your screen even if it isn't saving the file, so the indicator is still there.
I will point to the fact that the icon doesn't show which software is recording. It shows which hardware is recording. (Mic, webcam, screen recording.)
No, it does not "solve" things. You cannot control or configure the app from that. And what about the other apps which do something else, not record screen or use mic?
@@ContraVsGigi There is also a mic indicator. I can flip your question around: what if a screen recorder app chooses not to implement a status indicator?
But the answer is sandboxing and Wayland. Sandbox the app so that pipewire is the only option to record the screen. And with Wayland, there's an actual security model so apps can't see other windows.
Brodie be like: _pokes at Gnome_ come on, do something...
To be fair, they make it really easy to poke fun at them. And systray is one of those things.
I like how KDE does it - it's simple, you can toggle each icons between always display, always hide, display when relevant, and disable. You don't like systray at all? Remove it.
But at the same time, as many have said, KDE doesn't let the user know that they can change every little bit of their desktop environment... Ahem... TechTip man... *cough...
But, they are making new changes that improve things so I am looking for those. Love KDE, they have done more work than they get recognized.
Frankly, the fact that options to hide systray icons exists kind of makes the point that the systray is heavily misused and full of garbage that shouldn't be there.
I agree that stuff like Discord hiding in the systray instead of closing is annoying, but I can just turn it off. 🤷
Jebus - I wish people who talk about UX actually had some experience in the field instead of substituting UX or "design" for "I don't use or like it." Having ONE place for all notifications is consistency, which is textbook good user experience and textbook good design (ie, good design should not be noticed to be good). If someone's running 50 different applications, it would be very difficult to remember where each application communicates information to the user - the camera example was perfect. If there wasn't a sys tray Linux would not be a viable option as a desktop replacement, especially in relation to MS and Apple.
When I starting off, DT was a decent resource - but he's moved firmly into the camp of gatekeeping and conspiracy these last few years.
Your comment just reminds me of all the hilarious UI vs. UX memes I've seen. I'm 💯 with you, btw-even though it's rare these days that I _want_ anything on my computer to notify me of anything, I like that they all show up in one spot in elementary, as opposed to each application managing its own toasts like how Apple does it.
@@GSBarlev Right!
3:43 their are Twitch streamers who thought they were not live anymore and euh... did things. So yes, this is definitely important.
I thought DSP was steaming on UA-cam when that happened?
The way DT explains how he views systray icons as useless quick launchers is essentially how they notoriously were used in Windows XP (which i believe he has said is the last version of Windows he actually used and knew how to use)
Back then applications would just add a systray and go "hey i started in or closed to the background, i will be in the systray if you need quick access to me" and a lot of those did nothing more than just reopen the application and served no other purpose than that, even chrome had a useless systray at some point that was just "run in background when closed".
These days systrays can provide easy access to functions that people can use without learning a hotkey (see flameshot systray as a good example)
Me personally i prefer having a systray accessible one way or another because of easily able to glance at it to see the status on some applications like discord, obs, ferdium, etc. But i do not like the systrays that act as quick launchers and do not need to run in the background.
I don't know how you used Windows XP, but the System Tray Area always had full functionality. Your apps always had menus and you could do all sorts of things using the Tray Area icons. That is, if the app implemented it. I should know not only from using this functionality, but I even made apps using the Tray Area icons in that period.
@@ContraVsGigi just because it had full functionality doesn't mean that the majority of applications actually utilized it, a lot of them (that i remember using in that era) just had the context menu of "run in background" and "exit", sometimes there might be a "settings" option there or they used the notification area to just display a notification bubble and nothing else than that. I'm not saying there weren't applications that actually made use of the tray area functionality, but from my experience the applications commonly used here did not utilize them well.
Reading over my original message i made it sound that all of the applications back then utilized the systray in a bad way, whops my bad!
chrome still has a systray, it is just disabled by default
if you install an extension that runs at all times in the background, then the sys tray will appear, ofc you can choose to disable it
I personally still like the system tray. I also very much like how KDE has implemented it, with the ability to show icons in the panel only when there's a notable status, to always show, to always hide in the pop out box, or to completely hide. And of course being KDE, the whole system tray plasmoid can be removed if desired.
From the sound of things, there are a lot of us KDE users out there.
@@anon_y_mousse Because KDE's philosophy of "Simple out of the box, powerful when needed" is really appealing (even if in my experience you sometimes sacrifice stability)
Systrays are a must for me. Think about it many new linux users come from windows where they have systrays and are use to having them for programs like discord. When I switched to linux about two years ago i liked having them and still do as it lets me know things like discord or obs are running in the systray. They are not for everyone but they do have a purpose.
DT is one of those people who finds it convenient to have new windows spawn in a Fibonacci spiral (when is that ever useful ?) so he is really not speaking for the majority of computer users.
Don't hate on the Fibonacci spiral.
@@BrodieRobertson The thing the Fibonacci spiral is 'meant' to do, it's not even good at doing. It's an approximation to a logarithmic spiral (the 'golden spiral') that is meant to fit neatly in one of those diagrams showing the Fibonacci sequence as a nested set of boxes and squares that all fit proportionally, made by putting quarter circular arcs of increasing size in the square parts of the boxes.
How it often __looks__ when you do this, is that the place where the spiral goes 'flat' (perfectly horizontally or vertically) lines up with where an earlier part of the curve goes flat in a direction perpendicular to the later part... But if you actually look at a proper golden spiral, __that doesn't happen__. It doesn't line up perfectly like how our brains think it does at a glance. The only reason why it works with the 'Fibonacci spiral' is because it's an approximation to begin with.
No.. The correct spiral to use for that, rather than using the golden ratio (approximately 1.6180339887), instead uses a ratio of about 1.5388620468. Or, more precisely, e^(lambertw₀(1.5π)/3).
This will actually line up the logarithmic spiral correctly on those imaginary boxes, something that the 'golden spiral' does not do. However, you then have to size those boxes differently, because they no longer will follow the Fibonacci sequence or the 'golden ratio'.
It’s just a better way of working
I feel like DT records bad takes on purpose to bait controversy.
Maybe, some people just wanna watch the world burn
Distroboomer strikes again
anon just found out how people on UA-cam make money
I like the new Gnome equivalent of the system tray. The background apps thing.
Usually when people say this (just in general) I feel it's in bad faith, but I have to agree here. I find it hard to believe he doesn't do this nowadays.
I agree that a lot of apps need to just close when you close them or be accessible directly through a desktop entry rather than also going through a systray. However, we do still expect Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sound, battery, safe USB drive removal, and cloud synchronization clients to all make some kind of systray appearance, and that includes some amount of interactivity as well. Now as for OBS, on Windows, its taskbar icon receives a red dot when OBS is recording/streaming. That’s similar, and I honestly think it’s better in a world where no one is using virtual desktops. However, given that we have tiling window managers on Linux that require virtual desktops to make sense, the systray approach that OBS has taken is for the better. It’s not like I’m cramped for space on my taskbar anyway (that’s just me, though).
Looks to me like DistroTube is projecting. I love having a system trey. I have a clock and calender in there, the weather, access to network connections, a clip board history, and more. It's groovy!🤠
I love clipboard history. I've had occasion where I needed something I copied an hour ago and forgot to paste it somewhere and *bam*, it's just there.
@@anon_y_mousse Exactly! It can be a big time saver.
I totally agree with you and the first thing i do in gnome is installing the extension which provides a systray (AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support)
It was the biggest reason to leave Elementary OS back in time.
System tray is configurable: you can hide it, or you can hide specific icon or icons. Do what you want.
(Multi-OS user) I find the systray useful, even something simple like checking if a backup is running, quick launching a steam game, seeing if certain apps are still running in the background, etc.
I would hate it more if an app like Steam was running in the background where there was no surface level indication of it doing so, at worst it might make me think something might be wrong, e.g. crashed
Hey, Brodie! I have a video topic suggestion: the state of XWayland fractional scaling! Currently, KDE Plasma has a solution implemented since about a year ago that works for most use cases, while GNOME continues to use the old method, which causes all apps that use X11 (such as *Discord* and *nearly all games*) to appear very low-resolution and blurry at fractional scales, severely hampering the user experience on 1440p monitors! I would really love for someone like you to bring more attention to this issue in a dedicated video! Plenty of people have been asking GNOME to implement KDE's solution, but the issues have stagnated.
The lesson to take from here, is that everyone wants and uses his system tray differently lol.
The cloud sync icon, is actually pretty useful. It tells you the files are synced, meaning you have multiple windows opened, and save a document for example, you don't have to open the file manager to confirm.
I don't like a bloated system tray, and sometimes I use Gnome's background indicator for Flatpaks. However I really love the clipboard one, it's a bit weird Gnome Shell doesn't offer this by default.
Plasma's tray is even better. As this also indicates running tasks, and can even eject devices. With GS you have to install extensions.
10:16 I absolutely agree, this and the "user-facing app in daemonized state" are the two things I like about the system tray. There are apps that are useful to access, but don't really need a full window, or don't make sense to take up a full window. The volume slider is probably the canonical example, and although a lot of the system-provided tray menus appear in a settings application most of the time, third-party apps do not. As well as the daemonized state of an app, such as Discord, where having a window open, even minimized, does not always coincide logically with running in the background, and where not running at all is also a valid state (i.e. polkit is not user facing, and also not running is not really a valid state, but steam not running in the background is a perfectly valid state, particularly if you're not playing any games for a decent chunk of time, and it matters to the user)
I like system trays. Since I don’t really use discord on my computer I hadn’t noticed I didn’t have a systray. Now I know I gotta go download that extension cause honestly it's very useful. I got (mostly) used to not having desktop apps. I actually don't like not having them, I feel like I have to go fishing for apps too often without desktop icons but I don't really care too much, if it becomes too annoying (which it's becoming kinda annoying rn) I'll check on how to enable them, but systray is definitely not negotiable.
Totally agree, systrays are incredibly useful to a LOT of users. An interesting anecdote on this topic is the fact that when MacBooks were redesigned to have a "notch" where the camera protruded into the screen area, 3rd party devs came to the rescue with an extension that allowed the systray area to expand to more than one line because some users used so many systray utilities that they took up almost half the screen width at the top of the screen. I would not use an operating system that did not allow me to use systrays (Linux or otherwise)
Apps in systray and apps in taskbar have different priority to the user. Taskbar is pretty much active set of stuff you use right now.
I like to hide plenty of my sys-tray plugins, because I don't get a notification. However I really like the quick access. As to the Sys-Tray Clipboard, I love being able to quickly check if something actually got copied into my kill-ring. Or being able to look through it to find the bit I need again, without having to Yoink everything before it out somewhere.
I'm with you Brodie!
I find the systray extremely useful and use it All-Of-The-Time!
IMO systray basically fulfills three different, somewhat unrelated, functions:
- Indicating applications running in the background, and providing easy access to them (without requiring them to constantly have a window open cluttering your workspace).
- Displaying important applications status, so you can see it at a glance without needing to switch over to it's window. One example of this is whether OBS is recording, as mentioned in the video. Another example is whether the e-mail client has new e-mail. Notifications are fine for something like instant messaging, but I don't want a notification to pop-up and interrupt me whenever I receive an e-mail, I want a passive indicator I can glance at at my leisure.
- Quick-access applets, so you can perform certain actions without opening a full window. Some of this is system stuff, e.g. network management, volume, clipboard, and media control. But it is useful for non-system applications to be able to provide arbitrary such applets. Interfaces such as MPRIS and libcloudproviders covers some specific uses, but not the general case.
Not all of this may have been originally intended uses, but nevertheless they are all things they're used and useful for. These functions don't necessarily all need to be in the same place, and there may be ways to do it better. But they are all useful, and GNOME removed systray AFAIK without providing alternative ways to fulfill all these functions. And as mentioned, not providing analogues of Windows interfaces makes cross-platform applications harder (we're lucky there is a Linux Discord client at all for example, and we can't expect them to implement GNOME-specific stuff).
Yep, and regardless of where a feature got its start, if it's useful, then it's good.
I've always found Systray applets useful myself. The systray as a whole can get cluttered at times but I'd rather have it than not.
Yea, i'm with you on this one. I use the systray all the time.
The Live Tiles system in Windows 8/10 improved on the system tray but developers ignored it because the bad old way was still available: status updates/launchers from all of the applications a user chose were made available by clicking the Start button, and could be sized and positioned by the user. Gnome has something similar in the notification menu, which is used by its own calendar, clock and weather apps, but other applications can ignore it because everyone installs a system tray extension.
Because Tray Icons are a better solution altogether and they are actually complementing each other, not excluding each other.
@@ContraVsGigi they obviously didn't exclude each other, but if they complemented each other both would have been used. Live Tiles showed more data, were a larger click target, and were less of a distraction. It was an alternative, better option.
I have to say. I watched DT's video and thought it was reasonable at first. I watched this video, I got the points u made and bought them. I'm not opposed nor agree with the current state of systray icons on Linux. I've used Sway for a while now (with Waybar) and never felt the need for them, until a week ago I couldn't configure the network at my university through nmcli and had to install nm-applet; it made my life so much easier. Even now I don't think we should have them just because users from other OSs r used to them. To me it should depend on the value they can bring to the table and I definitely agree with the argument from GNOME blog about API specialization. To sum things up, I have notification enabled on YT for both channels and I appreciate both, I don't know how but I liked both videos 😝 . Please keep the good work going.
You can also hide the obs window (with the systray) and then start/stop recording/streaming with the systray. I find it very useful instead of using the big window for just a button (maybe it's just me).
1:03 It's not just the fact that there are more developers than designers. In my experience (as a core contributor on a pretty large open source project), there frequently are people with design experience offering to help (they probably get more annoyed about bad design than developers about bugs). But designers often can't really do anything on their own, unlike developers, who can just contribute the changes they want to see, even if it's just small things. This means, designers always need developers with the time and interest to implement the designs, which also means, they have to agree on things, since you can't exactly force open-source contributors to do something they don't want to do (which often includes any design changes since it'll always be a change from what you're used to but it also can just be that they don't like some fairly small details). And ofc, in open source projects, there's almost always something more important to work on than making it look good. And (especially consistent) design also is rarely something that can be improved step by step with little changes, so one can't do a few small contributions here and there. This also means, it's very hard for designers to start contributing and get accepted as part of the team which also makes it hard to seriously discuss or itertate designs so that things that the developers maybe thing are bad can be improved.
Overall, this means that even if good designers present some ideas, it often just leads to nothing and they lose interest or motivation again. I think the only way this really works is if they also have the skills to at least mostly implement their ideas or if a designer was part of the team early on.
16:11 - Oh they acknowledged it alright, here's an excerpt from the post: "Regarding Third-party Tools" published on May 9th 2022, under the "*Enhancements to the HUD and Other UI Elements" section:
"We believe that people use the aforementioned tools to expand the HUD and display more information because they feel that *existing functions are insufficient* for tackling high-end duties. In recognition of this, we intend to review the most prominent tools, and in order to discourage their use, *endeavor to enhance the functionality of the HUD*. Though it will take some time, we're determined to make it happen─*not least for the benefit of those who play on consoles.*"
gnomes new solution to system trays is having a button in the quick menu settings of background apps. it still needs a lot of work, but i think in 45 and as they move foward, itll be better. i like having it out of the way, and explicitely for background apps, like theres an explicit place for media playback, notifications etc
Reinventing the wheel, a very smart thing. And that with braking everything, because I don't expect them to intercept the behaviour and show the apps somewhere else.
@@ContraVsGigi it is entirely possible they could have a drop down for each app with its menu if it has one.as much as i critise gnome, im glad it gives so much attention to every minute detail in its desktop, and making it an actual cohesive thing unlike everything else where features feel tacked on
I love some kind of hybrid systray like on MacOS. where most apps actually use the dock rather than systray to show its status.
but a normal systray is also really useful, for E.G applications that dont require a window, but only a right click.
People can meme on MacOS but the dock is an incredible feature
@@BrodieRobertson The dock by default is centred and larger than the Windows taskbar, KDE taskbar, and GNOME top panel. It cannot be considered incredible if it takes up precious vertical space.
The Mac auto-hide dock works really well. It can also be reassigned to the side of the screen if you prefer. I used to think the dual bar design was terrible until I got used to it. I still prefer single bar designs, but it isn't all bad.
@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 I am aware, lol. Apple just sets it that way by default because it looks nice, except it doesn't when you open something like a web browser... Ubuntu does it right out of the box, with a dock on the left-hand side.
I absolutely love the system tray! I use it all the time, both on Windows and Linux. I find it a really handy an useful feature to have information at a hover an instant control over something with a left or right click. It is much better than having to go through a menu system, click on an app, wait for it to launch, then rummage around in it, find I have to then put my password in again, just to see if a setting or whatever is correct. The system tray also (usually) allows you to instantly blank the screen... People I have spoken to that don't use the system tray are those that don't know how to or the features it offers, but once they see what it can do then they start using it. :)
I don't even use a systray myself because I just do not have a use for it, but I sure don't go around claiming it's a bad feature or anything lol. I think what DT is missing here is that people just use their system in different ways, and for many that includes a systray. Just like for many even bringing up the notion of something like rofi seems like you might as well be speaking another language and all they're comfortable with is just clicking everything, and that's totally fine!
I actually really like how Windows does it honestly, because it has a nice looking settings menu with just a little toggle button for everything that's ever tried to be part of your systray and it just works really well imo.
I just wish we had some kind of standard at all for how this was all handled, I don't care what it is as long as it gives the user some kind of control over it.
Steam no longer offers option to disable systray. I love many systray icons, but I also need it to be configured. Recently, too many apps abuse it by forcing it without option to disable it. Even worse, some apps open/start to a systray, so instead of clicking it once, I need to click the launcher, wait till it shows in systray, move my cursor over it and click it again, sometimes I need to right-click it and choose option to open.... I would kick in the nuts the person who invented this kind of starting an app. However, those are problems of apps, not of systray itself. I love how sysytrays hide certain icons so I can reach them when needed, but they won't clutter the space on the panel.
Systray IMO is a mandatory part of the system. It's a convenience option that shows or hides some background apps, depending on what you need. Plasma is doing it well, Gnome not at all... Guess which DE I am running ;)?
I feel like "minimize to systray" was a lot more controversial when skype did it, because CPUs where more limited, but it's a bit of a silly discussion nowadays. I work on windows, and I personally like for a lot of applications like chats & email when they minimize to the tray. I can see that they are running and I am reachable, and the applications don't have to waste resources drawing a window.
One of my big annoyances with thunderbird is that it won't minimize to tray.
Especially for those electron apps he mentioned, not having to run their browser window can save a lot of ram.
My current PC runs Windows Server 2019, and there thunderbird hides in tray.
What I find most confusing is that the reliance on a launcher program for ... everything in a system seems ...... weird. It may be just I use windows, and I use launchers like steam, gog, twitch games thing, to do my games. and keep all the others organized in the start menu, task bar, & desktop.
I mean, I kinda want to keep an application open that I use for updating other programs (like steam, EA, GoG Galaxy, etc) but not have it taking up desktop space, or being highlighted on the taskbar either. X.x
I am fully behind a clean desktop.. but this minimalist desktop is just. .... weird to the point of 'is you human?'
I like having Discord running but without a window (just a systray icon) because most of the time its only purpose is to notify me. You could argue "just put it on a different workspace" but then when I expand to more workspaces it would be in the way.
I went without for a long time but eventually patched it into dwm because it's nice to have nmapplet up there on a laptop and way faster to turn down volume when levels get painfully loud with the panel app than opening a terminal and using alsamixer.
DT failed to consider big tiddy cat girls. Nothing against the guy, he was just dead wrong there, no further discussion is possible.
I love when programs prompt you for your preferred system tray minimize/close behavior DURING installation. And then make it easy to change afterwards, too.
Okayu? Nice.
Picturing Brodie choosing the right big titties anime cat image for the video is low-key funny
I will not dislose my methodology
@@BrodieRobertson not everything needs to be open source
Steam and other "close to tray" apps are a good reason to have a systray unless you enjoy using more time terminating them via console instead of a simple right click, exit.
I'm on GNOME and I like the simple, clean, minimalistic and mobile-like interface. But even I do use (through add-ons) some "systray"-like icons - I have one for the Clipboard manager/history (very useful!), one for printer and one to quickly eject (unplug the right way) USB drive/whatever.
I refer you to X11R3.2. It had no "system tray" per se. There was a "icon try" you could move any place on a display but all windows had to be started with: "command &" . xterm, xclock, xicontray etc. They were all windows. Toms Virtual Window manager made some features too like virtual desktops circa 1994. The current "debate" about why a desktop is $pro_reason|$con_reason to some of us is a bit like Thurston Howell complaining about the lack of caviar on the Island.
I don't mind systray icons from background programs just being there, but I do wish devs and designers made _better_ use of them
What I wish out of systray icons is to be able to know at a glance that the program is running in the background (BitTorrent Clients, Steam), that the program is doing something or has unread notifications (OBS, e-mail/messaging clients), and to pop its main window back open when I click the icon, and when its not needed the systray icon just disappears.
I like what android has in place for its status bar, for example you can expect mostly any application that records or downloads stuff for you to pin a notification to the notifications panel when you "home" out of it, which by extention also adds a notification icon to the status bar (Bonus: some quick actions in the notification itself!). Not very elegant, but it's far better than what we have here on the desktop in my opinion
Devious Applications would be a great dark themed nerd band name.
great video Brodie, yes systemtray is a must it is the first extension i install on my gnome 45 setup.... AppIndicator, GTK4 desktop icons (DING) and dash to dock lol.. if u look at the popular extension for gnome is usually them, wouldn't that tell gnome that people like these features and i believe they should have it back into their DE, but whatever if they dont i can understand, but im glad we have extension otherwise i would just not use gnome.
An Okayu enjoyer as well I see... Respects.
Brodie's arms are so yolked because of his gesticulations.
signal recently added systray support and i thought to myself "self.... im so happy that signal has a systray icon now. i dont have to have the window open on a workspace and i will know if i step away and get a message because THERE IS A FRIGGIN RED DOT ON IT NOW..."
Three, most Social type Programs have their sys-tray icon show something to denote a missed notification. Four Programs such as VLC Media Player has Media controls when Iconified.
I can't imagine not having a system tray. Could it be better? Everything can be better.
It was probably a hot take to stoke viewership/controversy, I interact with the systray on KDE constantly as it monitors VPN status, power, and application specific warnings rather than reading each window's information manually.
Well, I'm partially agree with DT on this. In my head the better way is not to use systray for not fully closed apps, but keep button in *taskbar* with that information, red dots or some other. Maybe distinct it visually that it represents background task but not minimized window. And keep systray for system gui-less stuff, like network/bt status, sound, brightness, etc.
I don’t have Notifications installed on my Linux and will certainly never do. So the little red dot in Discord is really helpful in my workflow
Finally, no-Wayland video! I do agree with you here. Systrays are useful and I use mine daily.
I think system tray has a place in my workflow with applications that are relevant in every workspace. I don't like it per say and tend to use it as little as possible, but it does the job.
I recently used a portable torrenting app on Windows because I wanted to get an ISO to install Linux with and when I closed the app, I want to say it was QB torrent, it minimized to the system tray. I only closed the app because my torrent was done downloading and I was done with it, otherwise before the Torrent was done I was minimizing it and when I saw that it just went into the system tray as an icon I right clicked it and exited the app completely. The next time that I used this app I went to the menu and chose exit and it did not go to the system tray. I'm glad that there were different ways to minimize/close this app. normally I don't like when things minimize the system tray but I can see how that would have it's use casea and I agree it should be an option, I agree just because I don't like it doesn't mean that everybody won't like it 👍🏽
I love the UX on Ubuntu. I am so much more comfortable in the terminal than navigating menus and trying to find buttons. Most things have a consistent `help` interface and are documented in manpages. Linux is way easier to use than Windows or macOS for this reason. I actually think we'll see more text-mode user interfaces in the future. They're highly accessible and navigating them is straightforward. Additionally, LLM can easily interact with text-mode interfaces.
It seems people, including DT, in this case, often forget certain applications are also made to be run as services or daemons and thus need to have a status indicator telling the user they are ready to receive commands or push status notifications or updates.
Steam may be just a game launcher, but it also includes features such as game updates, downloads, text chat, voice chat etc that need to keep an indicator to the user of whether or not the application is ready for them. Same goes for Discord and so on.
It works similarly as to what it does on Mac. Sure OSX allows you to have applications open on the dock with dynamic icons that allow you to see application status and so on, but certain software is not made to necessarily have a GUI or independent window, in such case it is fine for them to run on the system tray telling you its status or allowing for a sinple drop down menu of commands and such.
If DT is so hellbent in this opinion, he should start using GNUstep or OpenStep, as NEXTSTEP used taskbar/dock icons interchangeably with status indicators/tray icons.
Gnome user here. I use Dash to Panel and KStatusnotifier extensions to get a more permanent systray. I use volume percent, cpufreq, network stats, steam, and discord icons all the time.
From a dev's perspective
I am currently making a app for controlling keyboard maps and shortcut keys... (started as a gui for xremap configuration but my friends using windows and macos also want the same thing, so making it cross platform, )
and it should run in the background for it to control keys, but making a background daemon is a nightmare just even in linux... not to mention windows and macos... and it's just really convinent to just add a systray in qt and make the 'x' button just close the mainwindow, program keeps running due to systray and add a right click menu to close that app.. it's just 4 lines of code compare to writing a daemon serivice and dealing with all permission issue...
Honestly, I like TheLinuxExperiment's approach. From time to time try to use a DE that is vastly different from your usual one. In the end you might permanently switch to it or just go back to your favorite one, except this time you will know how other DE's do stuff and maybe try to implement some of their upsides into your established workflow.
I used KDE initially, but for a bit switched to Gnome. I didn't like how restrictive it was, however I really enjoyed how theyset up their workflow.
If your current workflow works for you, that's good, but you might end up like DT, having your comfy space and not getting why other people do things differently. Tho in this case, I think it's just an attitude thing. In the end, you just need to know that different people do things in different ways.
In case you haven't heard I'm planning to mess around with Plasma when 6 comes out
@@BrodieRobertson That's cool! Going to be waiting for the video!
I think systrays are very useful for mouse centric DEs and WMs. But, as you move to more keyboard centric system, it becomes less useful. However, we tend replace the system tray with our own indicators with custom status bars.
I use my systray all the time; the only icons I want in my taskbar are the windows I'm currently using, because that helps me focus.
Email, Discord, Steam, etc. should only be in my taskbar if I'm actively and directly paying attention to them.
Otherwise, I want them to hide away in the systray and notify me when there's something to pay attention to.
Your logic is flawed, if you hide them in the system tray (like in windows) then they can't notify you with the icon, and if they are notifying you all the time it means you didn't hide anything and they are constantly nagging in the system tray.
The correct thing to do is to deliberately check needed apps in between periods of working. You don't need a system tray for that, yes, hide the app from the panel and bring it back with the shortcut.
@@JamesSmith-ix5jd your logic is flawed, do you know of a thing named "clutter"?
You see, people like me hate visual clutter, I am not a minimalist, but I want my taskbar to only have the things I am actively working on.
The system tray should only have applications that have a lower priority but are still frequently used.
Discord is a great example, I don't want the discord window open at all times, it takes up space both on my desktop and my taskbar.
As for notifications, I have muted all the servers I am in, so the only notifications I get are from DMs, which tend to be far more important than server notifications.
I periodically check discord, usually after I finish a task or take a break, and I only check my favourite channels.
There is not one "true" solution, everyone has different needs, and you cannot say that someone's needs are wrong by basing them on your needs.
DT literally made this same mistake, he failed to realize that his needs are not universal.
I am a person with ADHD, and having visual clutter makes it hard for me to focus on a single thing.
And I dare say that soon a lot of people will be like that, social media has destroyed the attention span of a lot of people.
@@JamesSmith-ix5jd Perhaps I should clarify; I do deliberately check for things I consider "low priority", when I have time. Notifications I consider "high priority" do the pop-up thing, because they might require immediate attention. (Do we still call those things toast notifications?)
The filtering isn't perfect, and sometimes a "low priority" thing gets mistakenly treated as "high priority", but not often enough to be a problem. But both priorities of things tend to come from the same programs, like email & Discord.
So there's a tiered system:
1. Working on it now: taskbar.
2. Look at this ASAP: toast notifications.
3. Look at this eventually: system tray.
And I don't want to know about the third tier when I'm in the middle of something, because I find it distracting.
Does that make more sense?
2:58 a big tiddy anime catgirl has just been summoned ^._.^
I actually really like how Gnome does it, where the only stuff on the top right is the system icons and any icons that I manually choose to add via extensions (I use a weather one and a clipboard one); I also do really hate apps that pretend to close like DT said. However I don't use Steam or Discord, etc., I pretty much only ever use a browser and a terminal emulator and alt-tab between them, so it definitely depends on what apps you use.
I use Gnome... sometimes I try to go as vanilla as possible so I can understand the workflow concepts better. BUT, the System Tray is the first extension I activate, without exception. Too many apps utilize it, and until Gnome provides a better solution, that's how it's got to be.
System tray is the only widely supported way for applications to programmatically provide a status without having a window open and the only way to have a dynamic list of actions specific to the app. Is there an alternative? I would really like the launcher to show the status of the running app (not just that it's running) and to provide a dynamic actions menu.
Windows 8 and 10 had Live Tiles in the launcher doing that. Everyone complained because it was change.
Any application that can update in the background without direct user interaction should be a candidate to use the systray. As well as applications that can accomplish their entire feature set in a right click menu.
Mac separates these features putting the former in the dock and the latter in the systray; this makes a lot of sense to me, but in practice I don't like it. Maybe it's because I used Windows for 10 years before I ever heard of Linux and then a mix of Windows and KDE for another 10 years before spending more than a few minutes with Mac. Or maybe we just haven't figured out how to rationally explain why those 2 features go together. Either way, familiarity is not a bad reason to keep doing something. Familiarity is efficient for both devs who don't have to figure out a new way to do something and users who don't have to learn to use a new system
Totally agree with you. One of the reasons why I can't stop using Linux Mint... the PERFECT Desktop OS for me.
discord on MacOS doesn't actually close to the tray, it closes to the dock. I think that's much more useful than a tray loaded with discord, element, etc.
I really like the MacOS dock, and if gnome just integrated a certain plugin that does that maybe we wouldn't be talking about gnome still
looks like a minimized window on Windows-style taskbars whic people rather like however, so you'd get bug reports like 'why isn't the window closing'
'just all use mac docks then' sometimes the mac dock absolutely sucks the way it handles stuff, like there's no unified demenu or start menu, and it doesn't do window management at all. Also cannot do statusbar stuff, meaning now there's multiple bars on your screen that aren't programs.
All applications close to the dock in Mac by default. Closing a window never closes the application.
@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 I wouldn't say all of them, just a vast majority. apps can choose whether they want to close to the dock or not. some apps like system settings will quit on close
@@supercellex4D yea but it's a dock it's allowed to be like MacOS of they want. I personally think it's a good idea to have the dock be a place for apps you want, tray for utilities, etc.
Shoutouts to France for complaining about the whole Discord systray thingie and the app not closing when you click close in a privacy-focused fine iirc? This was a little while ago, but that bit in particular stood out to me. :D
I use the system tray all the time, and definitally enable it when using Gnome. In my system tray I have discord, tailscale, and syncthing. While I do use the discord icon to launch a lot, I also use it to tell me if I have unread messages. For tailscale and syncthing, I use those icons to tell me the status of those programs to make sure they are working and connected. I feel this is very useful, because I just need to look to the corner of my screen instead of opening the app to see the status. ALSO, the point about there being a difference between the next cloud icon and the obs icon, I think its that obs, DT manually starts and stops, where as nextcloud is just running.
Samsung DeX actually did this the right way with respect to the systray portion of the taskbar. As a window manager user on my notebook computer, I don't have a systray nor a taskbar.
DT's head may be shiny, but it doesn't illuminate, it only reflects!
I want to believe that that standardization between DEs and WMs would improve the ui would be better
When I close some application I use the Exit menu (if applicable) instead of clicking the X button. Think of using Firefox or any browser with multiple windows, imagine a window is hidden in another Desktop or Screen the instead of turning off Firefox you close that window in front of you.
So with sys tray things if you close the window it hide in the tray yes, so you are not sure if that you closed the applications. Meaning, if you want to close an application look for the option the application provides to quit/exit the application. Some tray based applications have context menu for exit/quit the application which is far easier for me than looking for the main window of an application and browsing the menu for Exit.
The way the GNOME team is trying to control what users should expect from a desktop is like putting a fence across a river to divert it.
I use gnome and systray extension, but I use because applications forces me to use. I agree that systray are "useless" in the current state, but unless if all big apps change the way they works, it will be necessary. I prefer something like Android, the app require attention, it show an icon, otherwise, it stays hidden. Gnome has a pretty cool feature that shows when the webcam is used (not sure how/when it was implemented), so maybe isn't a big deal the OBS situation.