Battery icon not keeping up/changing with battery drain

[kylecorry31]

Reporter info

 * Distribution - Pop!_OS
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 17.04
Release:	17.04
Codename:	zesty
 * Related Application and/or Package Version - GNOME Shell, pop icon theme 1.1.10 (not completely sure which application is the related one)

Actual issue

The battery icon takes a very long time to change its look to indicate how much battery is left. It took between 30 minutes and 45 minutes before the battery icon indicated it was down to around halfway.

Steps to reproduce (if you knew)
Unplug laptop (System76 Gazp9) and allow battery to drain. The icon does not seem to keep up with the draining (reproduced multiple times, but not consistent)

Expected behaviour
This icon should "drain" with the battery percentage to indicate to the user how much is left at a quick glance.

Other Note (feature-request, question, etc...)

[kylerchin]

I don't think it is a battery issue. I suggest a bug fix. I have the same problem. I believe the problem may have originated from the gnome shell or Ubuntu's software. To make sure, please post the output of upower -d
Thanks!

[ryanleesipes]

This is a bug, I also suffer from this. The battery icon does not properly reflect how much life you have left. When it falls below 50% it still looks like > 75%. (Don't have a screenshot yet, have to run my battery down).

[JosephMcc]

Keep in mind that there are a very limited number of icons to choose from to represent the status. Look in /usr/share/icons/Adwaita/scalable/status. The percentage is much better reflection then the icon representation.

[kylerchin]

Yeah, but it's still freaking me out. ****shiver****

[kylecorry31]

Here is the upower -d output:
power.txt

UPDATE: here is the upower -d output at 35%, still "battery-good-symbolic":
power2.txt

This is what the UI looks like at this point:

It looks like the icon being displayed is "battery-good-symbolic", which doesn't seem right because I had around 58% battery. It should probably display the "battery-medium-symbolic" icon at this point.

I also noticed that the pop-icon-theme has the same icon for both the medium and the low icons, which is a bug in that theme:

I don't know how feasible it would be, but it may be worthwhile to add icons (and support in the system for switching to them of course) for different increments than just full, good, medium, and low. Maybe every 10%?

[kylerchin]

Let's modify our icons!

[ryanleesipes]

Marking this as BSB as the icons exist but someone needs to go through and change when they are used.

[kylecorry31]

I might take a look at this (I won't have computer access until Tuesday, so if anyone wants to do it before then, feel free to)

[cduston]

I think this is expected behavior from upower. Taking a look at the source code (https://cgit.freedesktop.org/upower/tree/src/up-device.c#n99) we have these lines for the case of "charging":

get_device_charge_icon (gdouble percentage,
gboolean charging)
{
if (percentage < 10)
return charging ? "battery-caution-charging-symbolic" : "battery-caution-symbolic";
else if (percentage < 30)
return charging ? "battery-low-charging-symbolic" : "battery-low-symbolic";
else if (percentage < 60)
return charging ? "battery-good-charging-symbolic" : "battery-good-symbolic";
return charging ? "battery-full-charging-symbolic" : "battery-full-symbolic";
}

So between 30-60 is "good", according to UPower. I assume the case is similar for "discharging", but I can't quite understand the code in that section. In addition, "medium" is never used (maybe 30-60 should be "medium" and 60+ should be "good"?) In any case, that part is a problem with UPower.

I agree with the modification to the icons though. If I have time I'll just go and erase a little bit of it I suppose...

[isantop]

The icons are improved in 287623e0286fc993cdbabb6bd760df8276981378 and 22d7319f24224ee7d7edbfada1916d14cb030ac1

[isantop]

This issue was moved to pop-os/pop#54