No tray icon on Linux since v4.2.3 (Electron v8 based build)

[vladimiry]

To make the story short, if the tray icon is visible and functional then if needed just re-enable the Start minimized to tray and/or Close to tray toggles on the General app settings block:

If you don't see the tray icon or its menu acting flaky then keep reading the issue.

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The v4.2.3+ app release is based on Electron version 8. Electron since v8 switched to use SatusNotifier tray icons which some Linux systems don't have good support for. This is why new app release resets the Start minimized to tray and Close to try flags for Linux users. In along with the flags reset Linux users get the respective notification with a link to this issue:

Besides, since v4.2.3 new app Linux users get the Start minimized to tray and/or Close to try flags set to false by default.

Related upstream @electron issues:

• No tray icon on Linux (electron@^8) electron/electron#21445
• Some tray mouse click handlers not processed and tray menu displayed at the same time electron/electron#21576

SatusNotifier tray icons support status:

• KDE: supported out-from-the-box.
• Xfce: supported (xfce4-statusnotifier-plugin needs to be installed and then respective widget added to the panel). There is also https://gitlab.com/vala-panel-project/xfce4-sntray-plugin working plugin, alternative to xfce4-statusnotifier-plugin.
• Gnome Shell: supported with the help of preinstalled gnome-shell-extension-appindicator extension. Possible issues:
  • The tray/menu clicks might act flaky (respective issue placed).
  • The tray icon sporadically disappears, usually on unlocking the system from sleep/standby mode (respective issue placed).
• Cinnamon / Mint: "System Settings" -> "General" -> "Enable support for indicators" flag needs to be enabled. Some issues still possible, see Linux Mint/Cinnamon doesn't support StatusNotifier tray icons standard linuxmint/cinnamon#9176.
• polybar: not supported (respective issue placed). See snixembed use workaround.

[vladimiry]

@joshirio can you list xfce4-statusnotifier-plugin package as optional in AUR repo for v4.3.0 release (which I just published)?

[joshirio]

sure, I will!
The update will be made as soon as possible.
EDIT: done

[vladimiry]

Closing the issue but keep it pinned for a while.

[TheDcoder]

Thanks for posting the status of the tray icon update in a dedicated issue with all the resources, working fine with xfce4-statusnotifier-plugin on XFCE panel!

[ghost]

I am using dwm with patched systray support and I tried to enable the start minimized to tray setting to see if it works with newest release. It didn't. Now I'm locked out of app because its window never appears and the config file seems to be a binary with encrypted content. How do I undo toggling that setting?

[vladimiry]

@somospocos, Start minimized to tray and Close to tray toggles were intentionally reset for Linux users in v4.3.0+ so they could verify that the tray icon is visible and functional and only then enabled the toggles back.

To reset the flags again you could set the startHidden and hideOnClose flags to false in /home/<user>/.config/electron-mail/config.json file.

Besides if the app is already running and you run it again then the app window will be displayed. So there is a way to show the hidden window without the interaction with a tray icon.

[ghost]

@vladimiry thank you, I have no idea how I overlooked that file. I was looking at settings.bin and saw it has encrypted content.

Since ElectronMail without a systray icon is pretty much unusable to me, does it mean I need to choose between using the last old version (4.2.2 I think) which has systray support or give up on using ElectronMail?

By any means, I'm not blaming you for an upstream problem. It's just that broken backwards compatibility systray support in Electron totally ruined my user experience. The reality ended being even worse than those countless Electron memes floating around online.

[vladimiry]

There was a choice to sticking to Electron v7 or upgrading to v8. For a lot of reasons, the choice was made toward upgrading the Electron version. From my side, I believe I did at least something to tackle the issue by resetting the toggles and showing notification with a link to this issue. Many much more popular/starred Electron-based apps silently updated to Electron v8 leaving Linux users in the dark why tray icons support got broken.

Since ElectronMail without a systray icon is pretty much unusable to me, does it mean I need to choose between using the last old version (4.2.2 I think) which has systray support or give up on using ElectronMail?

No idea, the choice is yours. Addition option is to enhance the dwm with patched systray support toward supporting Status Notifier tray icons standard or using another Linux/DE.

By any means, I'm not blaming you for an upstream problem. It's just that broken backwards compatibility systray support in Electron totally ruined my user experience. The reality ended being even worse than those countless Electron memes floating around online.

The issue actually comes from @chromium which is used by @electron.

[vladimiry]

Cinnamon has just resolved linuxmint/cinnamon#9176.

[vladimiry]

Some Linux users who still experience the tray icon issue with Electron-based apps might want to try https://git.sr.ht/~steef/snixembed thing. Also see polybar/polybar#2010 (comment).

[vladimiry]

It turned out Electron is getting rid of DBus related tray icon implementation rolled out with @chromium update in Electron v8 in favor of previously used / GTK/appindicator approach, see electron/electron#23674. So I will then happily remove the behavior described in the first message and the related code too.

[vladimiry]

GTK/appindicator-based tray icon is now back on Linux. Next release coming soon.

[vladimiry]

@joshirio xfce4-statusnotifier-plugin is merged into the default xfce panel tray plugin (for a while), so can be removed from the optional deps of https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/electronmail-bin.

Since the next/5.1.3 app version, the tray icon on Linux requires support for StatusNotifierItem
by user's desktop environment (#514 (comment)).