Ubuntu – Battery indicator has disappeared from Gnome panel

batteryindicator

I'm using Gnome Flashback (still the best!) on Ubuntu 14.04. In the Indicator app, it used to always show the battery level indicator. Now, it's missing entirely:

no battery indicator

I've looked in the power settings to make sure it's set to show no matter what:

power settings

I assume "When battery is present" means "show the battery indicator whether charging or plugged in or whatever, just as long as the physical battery is in the laptop." I also tried the other option, "When battery is charging or in use", but that doesn:t make a difference.

The battery indicator was there consistently since upgrading to 14.04 a month ago, and has only started to be shy about appearing within maybe the last few days. So far as I know, I haven't done anything to alter any settings regarding power or indicators or applets that would have any impact on this.

Why is my power indicator missing, and how do I get it back?

Best Answer

Note: Try steps 4/5 first, it may be fixed with 1st hit.

Below the extended instruction to debug the problem with the indicator.

  1. Check if indicator-power-service is running:

    ps ax | grep indicator-power

  2. If it's running, try reset its settings then restart it:

    dconf reset -f /com/canonical/indicator/power/
pkill -f indicator-power-service

    No success, locate it then try it from terminal (looking for any errors in output):

    sudo updatedb; locate -r indicator-power-service$

    My system is 64bit, So:

    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-power/indicator-power-service

    If it works with command, then some thing wrong with its autostart.

  3. As it was checked, it isn't running on start up. Verify the existence of:

    /usr/share/upstart/sessions/indicator-power.conf

    description "Indicator Power Backend"

# Want to move to indicator-services-[start|end], but that's not all
# there yet.  Use the signals that exist today for now.

start on indicators-loaded or indicator-services-start
stop on desktop-end or indicator-services-end

respawn

exec /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-power/indicator-power-service

    /etc/xdg/autostart/indicator-power.desktop

    [Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Indicator Power
Exec=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-power/indicator-power-service
NotShowIn=Unity;
NoDisplay=true
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false

  4. This works for me with a fresh Ubuntu 14.04, Modifing indicator-power.desktop for autostart conditions similar to the other indicators. (Submitted bug report lp#1330302)

    sudo nano /etc/xdg/autostart/indicator-power.desktop

    Remove:

    NotShowIn=Unity;

    Replace it with:

    OnlyShowIn=Unity;XFCE;GNOME;
AutostartCondition=GNOME3 unless-session gnome

  5. Logout/Login

Well if it didn't work:

  1. Try purge it then reinstall it:

    sudo apt-get remove --purge indicator-power
sudo apt-get install indicator-power

    Reboot, Check again

  2. No success, as workaround you can run it this way (you may close terminal after this):

    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/indicator-power/indicator-power-service & disown $!

    & run it in background
    disown $! command to detach a process for current terminal, $! variable that hold PID of last process run in background

    Or better if add it to user startup applications, see How do I start applications automatically on login?

Related Question