How do I access and enable more icons to be in the system tray?

Question

So I'm messing around with Natty a little, and I noticed that all the apps that would normally use the system tray (or "notification area"?) aren't displaying there. Is that a bug, or is that the way it's going to be? I heard something about Ubuntu getting rid of that feature entirely. Is there a way to add it back? I mean, I didn't really like it, either, especially when there were apps that used it unnecessarily, but I can't use CryptKeeper at all now, or easycrypt, and I don't know whether Dropbox has synced without opening Nautilus.

Solution 1

From Ubuntu 13.04 onwards you have to whitelist the applications if you want to allow access to the system tray.

Firstly install dconf-tools from the software center ( or by clicking here) Then Press Alt+F2 and enter dconf-editor and run it.

Now navigate to Desktop -> Unity -> Panel.

Now change the value of systray-whitelist to

"all"

Note that setting this to "all" will likely lead to other bugs, as the old notification area is unmaintained, instead consider adding applications you need individually instead of just enabling everything. You can reset it to the defaults by checking out this question:

• How do I set the panel whitelist back to the default?

Do note that the system tray is entirely removed in 13.04 and newer and that older applications that still have not been ported need to be updated:

• Why aren't certain indicators showing in Unity?

Solution 2

In Terminal, copy and paste this command

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['all']"

The tip comes from this website;

http://www.webupd8.org/2011/04/how-to-re-enable-notification-area.html

Solution 3

You can upgrade Dropbox, as in the latest builds it has an indicator on Ubuntu. For other applications, if the developers do not add indicator support for them, you can simply white-list them as Alaukik says, and also notify the developer that they need to fix the application.

Solution 4

To show the current systray whitelist:

gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist

To whitelist all systray indicators:

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "['all']"

To append an application to the whitelist, substitute MYAPP at the end of this line:

gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist "$(gsettings get com.canonical.Unity.Panel systray-whitelist | sed -e "s/]$/, 'MYAPP']/")"

Solution 5

The best way, and ubuntu version independent is to run dconf-editor, and find (ctrl+F) this string "systray-whitelist" (unless they change it...)

You can edit its value to simply ['all'], you can restore it by clicking "set to default" button also.

Or find out what icons you want to show, one by one and add them there.

View more solutions

Comments

[blueyed]

I have tried it for lastfm, but a) I cannot paste into the Alt-F2 "thing" (so I've typed it), and b) neither using 'lastfm' nor 'last.fm' in the list (as the only entry) allowed the lastfm icon to be displayed in the notification area.

[belacqua]

@blue If you open that as a question (and indicate what the exact last.fm application you're using is), we should be able to find a solution.

[Praveen Sripati]

did the same for pidgin, but still the icon is not shown. raised a query in askubuntu already, but no response.

[cfi]

...to make the change visible immediately, also restart unity with unity (in terminal or in Alt-F2 launcher), or logout/login, or reboot

[kwill]

Have anyone tested this on Ubuntu 12.04? Its not working for me (it was working on previous versions)

[GDorn]

This trick worked for 12.10 ... there was no option to do this gconf-editor

[uygar.raf]

As of now, it's working on Ubuntu 12.10 without an issue.

[Cas]

@ilius These commands works on 12.04.

[Felix]

Note that in 12.10 the key is in /com/canonical/unity/panel/systray-whitelist.

[MestreLion]

@puneet: It's dconf, not gconf

[Itai Ganot]

Not working on Ubuntu 13.04

[Jessica P]

Not working on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.