Impossible to activate Frame from Gnome Shell

[luisivan]

In Gnome Shell (most used desktop environment on Linux) the systray has become obsoleted, and therefore there isn't any way to show Frame after its window is hidden. I think you need to just specify an app indicator instead of a systray icon for Linux.

Related issues:

• Appindicator as replecement for legacy tray icon on GNOME electron/electron#10427
• Make AppIndicator default on GNOME electron/electron#10619

[floating]

Thanks Luis!
How are you installing Frame in this case?
Is this fixed for you by installing libappindicator1? (sudo apt-get install libappindicator1)

[luisivan]

I'm using Frame without installing it, just running the AppImage locally. I also tried installing those libs with no luck, but other Electron apps (Keybase) load their indicators without trouble

[floating]

Let me look into this. What distro are you using? I've been testing with Ubuntu 18.04 which I believe is Gnome 3 and app indicators are working, even when booting from a fresh image.

[luisivan]

I'm using Arch Linux, and I'm just running the AppImage without installing it. Maybe that could be an issue in how Gnome Shell handles AppImages?

[floating]

So I don’t think it’s related to AppImages. I think it's just from the decision to “not to show status icons in GNOME Shell by default” starting with 3.26. https://blogs.gnome.org/aday/2017/08/31/status-icons-and-gnome

I tested against Debian 9 (Gnome 3.22.2) and Fedora 26 (Gnome 3.24.2) both worked out of the box with the AppImage.

I also have been testing with Ubuntu 18.04 (Gnome 3.28.2) which is newer than 3.26 but must be adding back support for status icons by default because it also worked out of the box.

Finally, I tested against Pop!_os (Gnome 3.30.1) and indeed there were no status icons to be found. That being said you can add them back with a Gnome extension, https://pop.system76.com/docs/status-icons.

I assume a graceful way to handle this situation will be added to Electron. I should be able to fallback to a normal app icon in cases where status icons truly aren’t supported.

The only thing I’m wondering about now is that you said you had some status icons working but just not Frame? If so, that could be a separate issue. What version of Gnome are you running? I tested Keybase alongside Frame each time and, at least for images I tested against, the results matched.

[luisivan]

I'm using Gnome 3.30, and I do have the status icons extension and its dependencies. It's weird. Still happens with Frame 0.9.

[floating]

Resolved with #113