Collapsible System Tray should be a built-in feature in Cinnamon

[moloch1994]

On Windows it's been possible to hide tray icons since Windows XP, first with horizontal expansion:

Then, starting with Windows 7 with a pop-up:

On Linux Mint Cinnamon there is no such integral feature, so people have been resorting to custom applets. There are currently 3 "working" applets that are said to perform this function:

1. Collapsible Systray
2. Drawer
3. Hideable Applets

I will describe problems with each of them:

1. Collapsible Systray worked perfectly fine on Mint versions 20.3 and older. With the only "flaw" being that it only hides the apps' tray icons and not other applets. Not a big issue, if an issue at all. However, now there's a bug that when you click on the "expand" button, it instead clicks on one of the hidden applets, therefore making the whole tray unexpandable and thus unusable. The only way to fix this is to either restart Cinnamon or expand it in some other way, for example with a keyboard shortcut or by enabling "expand on hover". Essentially, this applet is broken and is not likely to be fixed, as we see little to no activity from the creator/maintainer.
2. Drawer is a more capable applet as it can hide anything on the panel. However, some apps just wouldn't hide (e.g. uGet) and will actually block the applet from expanding. In addition, I found it very unreliable, as it would occasionally just stop working for no apparent reason or fail to hide certain apps (e.g. qBitTorrent) upon login, requiring you to relaunch those apps.
3. I've seen people refer to Hideable Applets as an alternative, but it really works very differently. You need to click on its icon to summon a pop-up, and then click on the applet in the pop-up to unhide it, and only then you can interact with the applet. After that you have to click on the icon again and select the applet you wanna hide again to hide it. Meaning, instead of 2 clicks, you end up performing 5. This is very clunky and inefficient.

Whatever the status of these applets is right now, we shouldn't rely on volunteers to maintain them. I view this feature as essential for a modern desktop experience, and it is present not just in Windows, but also in other desktops, such as KDE:

Deepin:

UKUI:

Xfce and others. With, perhaps, the notable exception being Gnome, which is intentionally deviating from traditional paradigms.

Without this feature my tray ends up occupying nearly half of my panel (on a laptop with 1366x768 resolution), forcing me to only use the modern Grouped Window List layout, which I'm not a fan of. I implore the developers to please make this feature an integral part of Cinnamon instead of forcing us to use unreliable custom applets.

[mfreeman72]

I agree. I've been using Drawer until Mint 22 came out. It worked perfectly for everything I used up through 21.3. Since the upgrade to 22, Drawer seems to work well with fewer tray icons for some reason, causing Drawer to malfunction frequently. It would be good to have an officially sanctioned option, since most 3rd party applets in Cinnamon Spices seem to be completely abandoned by their author and broken in one way or another (a frustrating discussion for another thread).

[Dsingis]

I agree so much. Coming from Windows, I've been trying out different desktop environments, and overall Cinnamon is the one I love the most with KDE Plasma a close second. The one thing I adore about Cinnamon is the corner bar, that works and looks like in Windows. You don't get that anywhere else, not in that style. The one thing I am absolutely sorely missing is a collapsable systray icon.

I think it would be an awesome addition, considering the corner bar from Windows is here, the collapsable systray icon should be added too.

[cplittlfield]

On the forums, we see a lot of these requests to make Linux Mint behave exactly as Windows does.

Very few people seem interested in learning a new way of doing things, which I personally think is a pity. My personal view is that if I wanted precise Windows-like behavior, I would have stayed on Windows. For me, the Cinnamon desktop environment is enough like Windows to be comfortable, but enough different to be refreshing. Now, when I am forced to use Win 11 on my dual-boot machine at the office, I deeply regret not having switched to Linux years earlier.

[moloch1994]

Very few people seem interested in learning a new way of doing things, which I personally think is a pity.

I initially thought you were replying to my post about the clock format, but the same criticism applies here. Having no collapsible systray is not new. This is what Windows 95 did.

[cplittlfield]

Instead of wasting energy berating me, I see three possible paths forward for you. One would be too stop complaining that the Cinnamon DE is not confirming to your will, and simply adapt. The second is to write a systray applet that does what you want. The third would be to find a distro that does what you want in every detail. Peace and blessings, regardless of the path you choose.

[moloch1994]

You posted a criticism of my post, but I pointed out how your argument was flawed. It's just plain arrogant and condescending to act like everybody else is rigid and simply can't move past the Windows paradigm, when the very distro is enforcing that paradigm.

Your "three paths" are yet again rehashing the common toxic reply constantly seen in the Linux community: "You don't like it? Do it yourself." This logic means there's no place for constructive criticism and contributions. I've actually donated money to the Linux Mint project and I simply respectfully ask the developers to consider my proposal. I don't demand it of them or criticize them for not implementing it, I'm simply offering a suggestion. For this I should be hearing that I'm "not interested in learning new ways of doing things," implying that I'm narrow-minded and rigid or that I should become a developer and write my own applet that I would then have to maintain for eternity? Yeah, maybe we should just all stop proposing ideas or reporting bugs, how much better would that be then.

[Dsingis]

Wanting quality of life and good features implemented, that happen to be on or come from Windows is not refusing to learn a new system. If Windows does something good, adopt it. The collapsable systray is undeniably a good thing to have. Not implementing it only because of some sene of gatekeeping is just not very reasonable.

[fosslover306]

3/4 of my task bar is filled on a 1366 px wide display, and a solid 2 inches of my 15 inch display is taken up solely by system and app indicators.

If a collapsible tray is for some reason to much to ask for then could at least the WiFi, sound, and notifications indicators be combined into a single pop up or something via a single setting or something.

And I have used the collapsible tray applets in the past and if they somehow managed to work correctly all 3 caused stability problems.

and quite frankly if I wanted to hear "use a third party add on that maybe works, because we are not adding that" I would use Gnome and Gnome is very user hostile so that is not a image you want to inspire of this project.

If nothing else the "Modern" panel is more like windows XP crossed with windows vista/7 and as mentioned above they both had collapsible indicators built in, you could even hide the WiFi, battery, and Bluetooth indicators if you did not care to see them most of the time to save room for other things you actually want to use.

I would be happy to leave this issue be If their is a technical reason for basically shutting down the whole conversation.

[moloch1994]

You see, the fact that a user has to go through all this, it's kinda the reason there needs to be a native implementation. It's confusing and you have to figure it out through trial and error.

[fosslover306]

After I read your tips, because the applet it's self has no instructions on how to make it work.


It proceded to hide my indicators and not show anything, and considering the statement "First, DO NOT remove the "Xapp Status Applet"!!! Only remove the "System Tray" applet, and only if there are glitches with Drawer (such as certain icons disappearing or the Drawer applet refusing to open or close). But always start with both "Xapp Status Applet" and "System Tray" applets installed and only remove "System Tray" if glitches occur." I suspect It will break in the future even If I fixed it today, and after I removed drawer I still needed to restart cinnamon to bring the hidden stuff back.

Unless the bottom picture is the instructions, and their is definitely no mention of troubleshooting tips so I used it the way it was clearly intended to be used. add it to the panel, and infer from the picture something about edit mode and assume it is broken if it doesn't work, like all computer users do.

In short drawer has improved nothing but it's appearance, and is broken just like all of it's forebears.

[mfreeman72]

So, I think I discovered the problem. Linux Mint's "Xapp Status Applet" and "System Tray" applets both do the same job -- display status icons. Unfortunately, Linux being what it is, there have been many different methods used over the years for displaying these status icons, each invented by the makers of the different desktop environments. Some of the older methods have been deprecated in recent years. But older programs (such as uGet) still use these methods. "Xapp Status Applet" doesn't support the older methods of displaying these icons. "System Tray", which is Linux Mint's older status icon display applet, does still support them. This is why Linux Mint still includes both by default. However, "System Tray" doesn't look out for when it has been hidden by another applet, such as Drawer. So once applets have been hidden by Drawer, and Drawer tries to display them again, they don't know how to re-display their icons. So they vanish.

This means that any method used for hiding icons on the panel, official or unofficial, will always cause these older status icons to disappear.

So, you have four options to make this work:

1. Move Drawer, and any icons you want Drawer to hide, to the left of "System Tray", so that the older status icons remain always displayed.
2. Find newer alternatives to your older programs.
3. Send a bug report to developers of the older programs and ask that they update them to support newer status icon methods.
4. Send a bug report to Linux Mint and ask that they make their "System Tray" applet work better with applets that hide other applets on the panel.

[mfreeman72]

So, to summarize: No. Drawer is not broken. Linux Mint's "System Tray" is. That's where the problem is occurring, and will always occur anytime the "System Tray" applet is hidden, no matter which applet is doing the hiding. Even if it's a "native" one.

[mfreeman72]

Another issue to consider: uGet (and probably any program still using deprecated status icon methods) is no longer being developed, according to its Github page (https://github.com/ugetdm/uget), and the last version I can find (2.2.3) is from 5 years ago. That's ancient, in programming and network security terms. It's really not recommended to use network-facing programs that are no longer being developed or receiving security updates, as they could pose a security risk to your system. You are, of course, free to use whatever you want to use, if you personally don't care about such things. However, it would both help you solve this applet hiding issue, as well as improve your online security, to find a different download manager. There are several available on Software Manager (just type "download manager" into the search bar).

[mfreeman72]

2. Drawer is a more capable applet as it can hide anything on the panel. However, some apps just wouldn't hide (e.g. uGet) and will actually block the applet from expanding. In addition, I found it very unreliable, as it would occasionally just stop working for no apparent reason or fail to hide certain apps (e.g. qBitTorrent) upon login, requiring you to relaunch those apps.

In System Settings -> Applets, do you have both "System Tray" and "XApp Status Applet" active on the panel? I've found that things work better with Drawer if you disable "System Tray" and only have "XApp Status Applet" running.

[moloch1994]

I also found a workaround for you:

* With uGet running (so that its icon is displayed on the panel), add Drawer to the panel, but keep it to the left of uGet's icon.

* Right-click on the panel and turn on "Panel edit mode".

* Move all applets you want hidden by Drawer to the left of Drawer's arrow icon, _EXCEPT_ uGet. Keep that to the right of Drawer.

* Right-click on the panel and turn off "Panel edit mode".

This will make uGet (and any programs that use the older status icon display method) stay outside of the Drawer applet's hidden icons and always visible. Yeah, there will be some icons you can't hide with Drawer, but it'll hide some and maintain all of your programs' functions. The issue, I believe, is that the "System Tray" applet doesn't know how to re-display its icons once they've been hidden, so they just disappear and never return. So keeping them outside of Drawer prevents them from disappearing.

Yeah, I kinda figured that "workaround" myself, which isn't a workaround for me at all. Maybe it's ADD or something, but I can't stand seeing one icon not behave like the rest, it stands out like a sore thumb. I'd rather just disable the icon altogether.

But anyway, the old Collapsible Systray applet used to hide it perfectly and even added proper applet hover highlight at the time when it wasn't there by default on Mint. It really did equalize all tray icons for apps, even allowing the user to adjust spacing between them. It's a shame it broke down. But its existence shows that this can be done if the devs choose to.

[mfreeman72]

Yeah, I kinda figured that "workaround" myself, which isn't a workaround for me at all. Maybe it's ADD or something, but I can't stand seeing one icon not behave like the rest, it stands out like a sore thumb. I'd rather just disable the icon altogether.

But anyway, the old Collapsible Systray applet used to hide it perfectly and even added proper applet hover highlight at the time when it wasn't there by default on Mint. It really did equalize all tray icons for apps, even allowing the user to adjust spacing between them. It's a shame it broke down. But its existence shows that this can be done if the devs choose to.

Again, I can't speak for the Mint devs, but personally, I wouldn't think the devs are going to choose to change their applet for something that has been deprecated and mainly exists programs that are outdated and have basically been killed off by their developers, and for something that is never seen by most people who use their operating system. They are a small team of developers, and have to place their priorities on things that make a difference for the most people and for forward-looking software developments. I'm sorry that a program you enjoy isn't working with the Drawer applet and isn't being supported by its developers anymore. It's a frustrating situation, I'm sure. All I can recommend is to try out other download managers (there are many of them in the Software Manager), and see if one of them can do the job well enough for you.

[moloch1994]

I don't understand why you're hyperfocused on uGet. I did mention that there are other minor issues. Plus, it's not like they need to reinvent the wheel. An applet already existed that worked perfectly with all apps. All that needs to be done is to fix the bug that was introduced with Mint 21 and maintain the applet officially. You're making it sound more complicated than it is.

[mfreeman72]

I don't understand why you're hyperfocused on uGet. I did mention that there are other minor issues.

Because it's the only concrete example you gave. Just about anything I said about uGet should apply to any program that uses deprecated technologies that are no longer fully supported. If you can give me some more specific examples, I can address them as well, if you'd like.

Plus, it's not like they need to reinvent the wheel. An applet already existed that worked perfectly with all apps. All that needs to be done is to fix the bug that was introduced with Mint 21 and maintain the applet officially. You're making it sound more complicated than it is.

This isn't exactly reinventing the wheel, and it's not complicated, and it's not a bug. Before, there were several different and conflicting ways to display status icons. Methods that have been less effective or more difficult to work with are being left behind, while better ways are becoming the standard. Once the standard is in place, it's the expectation that currently-supported programs follow the newer standards and let the old methods die off. Old programs that are no longer being developed should not be expected to function with newer standards, because doing so would create unnecessary work for little return on time invested. Linux Mint still allows for the use of outdated programs that use the older standard by keeping an applet around that works with it, but no one should expect that a tiny organization like Linux Mint's dev team make it a priority to keep a dying standard fully compatible with every new applet and option that's invented.

[moloch1994]

Because it's the only concrete example you gave.

No, I also said this:

as it would occasionally just stop working for no apparent reason or fail to hide certain apps (e.g. qBitTorrent)

Idk what more "concrete" examples you need, when most of the time the applet is failing randomly with no discernible pattern. Plus, as it's clear from the issues @fosslover306 experienced, it's not exactly easy to set up for some users.

This isn't exactly reinventing the wheel, and it's not complicated, and it's not a bug. Before, there were several different and conflicting ways to display status icons. Methods that have been less effective or more difficult to work with are being left behind, while better ways are becoming the standard. Once the standard is in place, it's the expectation that currently-supported programs follow the newer standards and let the old methods die off. Old programs that are no longer being developed should not be expected to function with newer standards, because doing so would create unnecessary work for little return on time invested. Linux Mint still allows for the use of outdated programs that use the older standard by keeping an applet around that works with it, but no one should expect that a tiny organization like Linux Mint's dev team make it a priority to keep a dying standard fully compatible with every new applet and option that's invented.

Again, I don't know what any of this has to do with an already existing applet that already supports all formats. I've mentioned this three times:

Collapsible Systray worked perfectly fine on Mint versions 20.3 and older. However, now there's a bug that when you click on the "expand" button, it instead clicks on one of the hidden applets, therefore making the whole tray unexpandable and thus unusable.

But anyway, the old Collapsible Systray applet used to hide it perfectly.

An applet already existed that worked perfectly with all apps.

To reiterate, we already have an applet that works with all formats. The bug it's suffering from has nothing to do with any specific application, therefore is probably unrelated to the old standards you keep referring to. All that's needed to do is to take that applet, fix it, and maintain it as official.

[Krezzin]

+1. Mint lacks a lot in terms of UX customization. From collapsing "Quick Launch" panel, to the collapsable system tray you can organize however you want by drag-n-drop. Dunno why it doesn't have that.

[fosslover306]

You mean broken and hard to use collapsible system tray applets? Their are plenty of those working ones not so much.

[mfreeman72]

The Drawer applet works flawlessly for me, although you have to make sure the outdated "System Tray" applet that comes with Linux Mint (as opposed to the "Xapp Status Applet" that also comes with Mint) is either disabled, or kept outside of the hidden applet area, since it's not compatible with it, and I don't think the Linux Mint team is actively developing it much anymore. I haven't tested the others recently, but I'll do that and report back, if you're interested.

[fosslover306]

Did drawer actually add instructions to make it work? If you check my screen shots taken when a posted them they did not exsist, and someone else said not to disable anything to make it work, it could cause bugs, and only if it causes bugs remove the default systray.

I'm not going to screw around with my system idicators by playing logic puzzle games.

[mfreeman72]

Did drawer actually add instructions to make it work? If you check my screen shots taken when a posted them they did not exsist, and someone else said not to disable anything to make it work, it could cause bugs, and only if it causes bugs remove the default systray.

I'm not going to screw around with my system idicators by playing logic puzzle games.

It's not a puzzle game. The "System Tray" applet isn't compatible with Drawer, so if you want to use Drawer, you have to keep it outside of Drawer's hidable area. It's incredibly simple. And since the "System Tray" applet is only there for backward compatibility with extremely old software that uses a deprecated System Tray protocol, then if you're not using old, outdated software, then you can safely disable it, and you probably have never seen it actually display anything anyway in that case. That's it. Nothing scary or confusing about it.

[mfreeman72]

Also, that "someone else" who said "not to disable anything to make it work" was me, and that's not quite what I said. I apologize if I was confusing. If you need instructions to make Drawer work properly, here they are:

1. Install Drawer (go to System Settings -> Applets, click the "Download" tab, find Drawer in the list, and click the download button to the right of the Drawer applet)
2. While still in System Settings -> Applets, click the "Manage" tab.
3. Click to highlight Drawer.
4. Click the + button at the bottom of the window. This will add Drawer to your main panel.
5. Right-click on your panel and activate "Panel edit mode".
6. Organize all of the panel applets that you want hidden into the left-most side of the panel grouping area you are using (panel grouping area being either the left, center or right areas that are highlighed as red, green, or blue when in Panel Edit Mode).
7. Move the Drawer applet arrow to the immediate right of the applets you want to hide, keeping any applets you don't want hidden moved to the right of Drawer.
8. Make sure that the "System Tray" applet (NOT "Xapp Status Applet") is not to the left of the Drawer applet, otherwise it may cause panel icons to disappear. To do this, you may need to run a program that uses this specific older System Tray protocol to make it visible. If you have no older programs that use the "System Tray" applet, you can safely disable it. If you're not sure of the difference between the two, I recommend just disabling the "System Tray" applet until you find that a program's tray icon isn't displaying. At that point, you can re-enable the "System Tray" applet, put the panel into Panel Edit Mode, and move that specific program's icon to the right of Drawer.
9. Once everything is organized the way you want it, right click on the panel and turn off Panel Edit Mode.
10. You may click the "Configure" icon next to Drawer in System Settings -> Applets -> "Manage" tab to explore and adjust the applet's settings. If you make a mistake, you can always click the menu button at the top-right and select "Reset to defaults" to get all the original settings back. When done, you can close all settings windows.

As I was trying to be as detailed as possible, these instructions look more complex than they actually are. They are mostly just generic applet management instructions.

[Krezzin]

I tried all available options, from Drawer, to AppLaunch, App Launch is the only kinda Quick Launch alternative, Drawer works but lacks an option to move the icons. It's still something. Although its always good to have this part of the OS. Doubt its coming soon since it's not been in Mint for years.

[mfreeman72]

I see. So the biggest sticking point for you is that you want to be able to move things around within the "Xapp Status Applet"/"System Tray" applets themselves, is that correct? Because you can move applets around anywhere you want on the panel, but within these System Tray applets, the icons generally stay in their default order. If so, that's a different issue than this thread is about, I think. I'm not sure of the specifics, but I think the issue with what I think you want to accomplish is that Cinnamon is trying to accommodate a variety of different System Tray protocols from different desktop environments for compatibility, and changing the order might break something in compatibility, so it has to be locked down. I could be wrong, and I'd love to hear dev feedback on that. I know I've requested a feature for the System Tray to make the dropdown menu for these icons match the main panel applet menu theme. Mint used to have this as an experimental feature years ago (Mint 17? 18?), and it worked beautifully for me, but it was said to be extremely problematic for some users, depending on the compatibility of the software they used, so they removed that. I think your request might have a similar issue, if that makes sense.

[fosslover306]

Those are some nice instructions, which would be very nice to read in the applets main settings page, or even the applets info page, and I hate to say it but if the required instructions to get something to work are not listed anywhere but a random github discussion, and read like a role playing games context setup scene to get all the players on the dungeon masters vision of the adventure, maybe it is to complex to setup, or is to fragile to work reliably, and yes I'm going to leave out the stuff about installing drawer. After that point it still sounds like I will break it if I click or look at it wrong or something, and I still have to change the programs I use that may or may-not have problems just to use something that does something that was built into windows xp 20 years ago, and worked flawlessly, and actually did work in one applet but it was abandoned so it broke, but it could still handle both new and old ways to do things so claiming that it's my choice of setup or programs I use and it can't be done is just making excuses.

Either the default systray gets collapsible or not at this point, and whoever maintains drawer needs to add some actual usage instructions so one can actually use it properly, and provide answers when stuff don't work.

"Right-click on your panel and activate "Panel edit mode".
Organize all of the panel applets that you want hidden into the left-most side of the panel grouping area you are using (panel grouping area being either the left, center or right areas that are highlighed as red, green, or blue when in Panel Edit Mode).
Move the Drawer applet arrow to the immediate right of the applets you want to hide, keeping any applets you don't want hidden moved to the right of Drawer.
Make sure that the "System Tray" applet (NOT "Xapp Status Applet") is not to the left of the Drawer applet, otherwise it may cause panel icons to disappear. To do this, you may need to run a program that uses this specific older System Tray protocol to make it visible. If you have no older programs that use the "System Tray" applet, you can safely disable it. If you're not sure of the difference between the two, I recommend just disabling the "System Tray" applet until you find that a program's tray icon isn't displaying. At that point, you can re-enable the "System Tray" applet, put the panel into Panel Edit Mode, and move that specific program's icon to the right of Drawer.
Once everything is organized the way you want it, right click on the panel and turn off Panel Edit Mode.
You may click the "Configure" icon next to Drawer in System Settings -> Applets -> "Manage" tab to explore and adjust the applet's settings. If you make a mistake, you can always click the menu button at the top-right and select "Reset to defaults" to get all the original settings back. When done, you can close all settings windows."

[emmegamma]

+1. While I'm a fan of Drawer, I do agree that, no matter what, Cinnamon needs some default way of hiding/reducing the number of icons. It's quite weird that it is not available, while there's TWO applets to manage system tray icons, one of which appears to be there only for obsolete apps but at the same time breaking other useful applets (Drawer)... crazy! And I only found out thanks to this thread, otherwise I might have migrated to some other DE/distro.

The easy and practical solution would be to not have System Tray in the panel by default (but installed and ready as "System tray (legacy)" or something), and then have Drawer instead. It's also possible to remove System Tray and substitute XAppStatusApplet (or both? not sure which one it resembles more in that aspect) with Collapsible System Tray, but that would require to test it and maintain it which might be quite some extra work for the devs.. not sure it's desirable.

[Secret-chest]

FYI, MATE has a drawer applet that works a bit differently because it creates a subpanel.