1942125 - [meta] linux sys tray icon issues

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: OS Integration, defect)

Description

[Heather Ellsworth]

There are issues with the linux system tray icon and a few bugs tracking them. This is a meta bug to collect them.

Comment 1

[Francesco]

To get to Windows parity, this is currently missing:

1. Ability to switch the tray icon off completely, pref: mail.biff.show_tray_icon (bug 1918035)
2. Ability to always show the tray icon or only show it when there is new/unread mail, pref: mail.biff.show_tray_icon_always (bug 1918035)
3. A different icon depending on whether the is new/unread mail or not (EDIT: filed bug 1946946).
4. A count of new/unread messages in the tooltip. Currently the tooltip is hard-coded "Thunderbird Daily" (EDIT: filed bug 1946946).
5. Mininize to tray, pref: mail.minimizeToTray (bug 1627479)

Note that the new/unread count can be toggled with pref mail.biff.use_new_count_in_badge.

Should there be bugs filed for points 3 and 4? (EDIT: filed bug 1946946).

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Yes please file.

Comment 3

[Corey Bryant]

1. Ability to switch the tray icon off completely, pref: mail.biff.show_tray_icon (bug 1918035)

Thanks for looking into this! Any opinions on disabling the tray icon by default until it at least shows an icon? Currently it's just a square that only allows quitting Thunderbird.

Comment 4

[Francesco]

You mean: ... until it at least shows a new/unread mail ?

I suggest to get feature parity with Windows. With the two prefs mail.biff.show_tray_icon and mail.biff.show_tray_icon_always you can achieve the following:
false/*: No system tray icon ever.
true/false (default): System tray icon for new/unread mail.
true/true: System tray icon always. That's the current state for Linux, but without new/unread count in the tooltip.

Comment 5

[Corey Bryant]

(In reply to Francesco from comment #4)

You mean: ... until it at least shows a new/unread mail ?

Yes that would be better.

Comment 6

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

It's not a square on Daily but yes, until its not just a square on beta/release, it would make sense to me to disable it.

Comment 7

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

There is something wrong with the mail/branding/tb_beta/TB-symbolic.svg image file.
If I copy that to mail/branding/nightly/TB-symbolic.svg, daily also displays the white square like beta. It does seem the path etc. are correct though - both for beta and daily, if I remove the file, that shows something different.

But there's something else wrong as well. If I copy the nightly brandied image to beta, that still does not work...
Potentially the svgs use some feature that's ifdef EARLY_BETA_OR_EARLIER.

Comment 8

[quietvoid]

Not sure if I'm on the right issue, but on version 136 my tray just displays the text "Thunderbird Daily" without icon.

Comment 9

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Please file another bug about that and mark it blocking this bug (bug 1942125).
You're getting the fallback (for whatever reason), but obviously that should not show as "Thunderbird Daily", but "Thunderbird" - which should not be hardcoded here https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/93b165b0f271d4d6ff3526d4789415a4d7936b92/rust/sys_tray/src/linux/mod.rs#82 but probably use brandShortName etc.

Comment 10

[Francesco]

This is mostly covered in bug 1946946 comment 1.

Comment 11

[Christophe Henry]

I know this is my first comment here and I'm sorry to enter the discussion this way but I would like to know if there's any update on this issue? See, I use Thunderbird on a daily basis, professionnally and I really need it to run on the background and stay in the system tray. Currently this is the last thing that prevents me from migrating to Wayland because I use systray-x for that. The problem is that systray-x (and Birdtray too, AFAIK) use an X11 API that has no counterpart on Wayland (or at least not to be merged and implemented any time soon. So when a native system tray support on Linux was announced on the roadmap for the middle of this year, I was thrilled. Sadly since then the feature was delayed and this ticket has stalled.

I'm not an highly experienced Rust developper, I don't understand exactly what's stalling this feature and I'm not familiar with TB's contribution process, but if there's anything I can do to make this feature progress, please let me know.

Comment 12

[Heather Ellsworth]

Hi Christophe, thank you for being a caring user and chiming in here :)

Honestly the only thing holding up progress is an engineers time to work on it. I started this project some time ago and then would love to find time to come back to it.

If you would like to challenge yourself and try to help out, that would be greatly appreciated!! And I can be your touch point to this project. If you're interested in this effort then you can learn about setting up your development environment here (to get ready to make changes to Thunderbird):
https://developer.thunderbird.net/thunderbird-development/building-thunderbird/linux-build-prerequisites

And here is where you'll find the linux system tray code within the Thunderbird codebase:
https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/comm-central/file/tip/rust/sys_tray/src/

You can always ping me on matrix too with any questions on getting started 🙂