Ubuntu – System tray icons disappeared after upgrading Ubuntu

indicatorunity

I have many applications with tray icons like davmail, hardware monitor. I miss this feature on Ubuntu 14.04. Does anyone have a solution?

There are some tools like Skype indicator, but I need a general solution for this problem so that I can add application icons to the system tray.

Best Answer

You may need to do two things:

1. Install the sni-qt libraries.

Install sni-qt Install banshee (click on the link), or with sudo apt-get install sni-qt sni-qt:i386 from the terminal, and then restart Skype. The tray/panel icon should now be back!

The reason this step is required is because sni-qt is installed automatically by the Ubuntu repository Skype package, but NOT by the Skype deb you directly download. Once Skype 4.0 is in the Ubuntu repos, you can install from there and this will no longer be necessary.

2. You may also need to whitelist the indicator

We don't know why, but for some systems this additional step is required before the indicator will show (thanks to Bruno Pereira!)

Steps:

  1. Install the package dconf-toolsInstall dconf-tools (click on the link), or from the terminal with sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

  2. Open dconf editor from the Dash (or dconf-editor from terminal):

    enter image description here

  3. On the left sidebar, use the triangles to navigate to desktop > unity > panel. On Ubuntu 12.10 you instead need to navigate to com > canonical > unity > panel. Double-click on the orange [JavaEmbedded...] part on the right, and add ,'skype' to allow the Skype indicator to show, as below:

    enter image description here

  4. Press Enter, close dconf editor, logout and login -- your indicator should now be back!

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