How can I change Dropbox's indicator applet icon?

Question

After installing Dropbox I was happy to see that although the installer said it would be version 0.6.7, it actually installed Dropbox 1.1.0. This version includes the new application indicator. However, Ubuntu does not ship with an icon for this by default.

How can I replace the icon with a nice, monochrome icon set?

Solution 1

The new version of dropbox V1.0 and higher comes with a support for new application indicator. I downloaded this .deb file which automatically installs monochrome indicator icons for dropbox. Even if you update dropbox, the monochrome icons still remain unchanged.

You can download it by adding the following PPA to the repository through the command line (terminal) by typing,

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tsbarnes/misc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install monochrome-icons-extra

You can refer to this tutorial for more details. Tutorial Link

If you do not want to go through the hassle of adding a PPA you can just download this .deb file, Click here to download the deb file

However please note that you will not receive further updates if you download this deb file instead of adding the PPA.

Hope this helps.

Solution 2

For ubuntu 10.x and Dropbox 1.x:

• Download one of the widely available Dropbox icon sets. For example, one of these.

• Unpack the set into a temporary directory and make sure it contains the following icons:

  dropboxstatus-busy2.svg
  dropboxstatus-busy.svg
  dropboxstatus-idle.svg
  dropboxstatus-logo.svg
  dropboxstatus-x.svg

• Find out which icon set you're using. Go to menu System -> Preferences -> Appearance. Click on your current theme then click "Customise..." and click on "Icons" tab. The highlighted icon theme is your current.

If you want to apply new icons to all users who use your theme.

• If it does not already exist, create the icons directory:

  sudo mkdir /usr/share/icons/your_icon_theme/status/22

  (replace "your_icon_theme" with the name of your icon theme)

• Stop Dropbox:

  dropbox stop

• Copy the dropbox icon files into the created directory.

• Update Gnome icon cache:

  sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -f /usr/share/icons/your_icon_theme/

• Start Dropbox:

  dropbox start

Or, if you want the icons to be effective to you only.

• If it does not already exist, create the local icons directory:

  mkdir ~/.icons/your_icon_theme/status/22

  (replace "your_icon_theme" with the name of your icon theme)

• Stop Dropbox:

  dropbox stop

• Copy the dropbox icon files into the created directory.

• Start Dropbox:

  dropbox start

Solution 3

I have written a simple shell script to automatically replace the icons with a nice set of monochrome ones which I have found here.

1. Extract the archive.
2. Follow the instructions in the README.

Solution 4

Read here for instructions on how to replace them, and you can look for icons here. I've linked to a list of icon sets here.

View more solutions

Comments

[Linh]

Cheers, that is a perfect answer!

[karthick87]

It was clear enough +1 here.

[Linh]

cheers, good answer

[Anon]

In Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 the dropbox status icons are located at: /var/lib/dropbox/.dropbox-dist/images/hicolor/16x16/status.