22.04 Custom Panel Indicators - Kbd, Notif., Clock

[JohnW]

How can we customize the Panel Indicators in Ubuntu Mate 22.04?

Nice and readable, but it takes up 1/4 of my Panel. I'd like to remove the Notifications & Keyboard icons, and minimize the Clock's date/time width.

I've finally upgraded from 20.04LTS to 22.04LTS and so far nearly all smooth sailing, except - my old Panel's customized "Indicator Applet Complete" (IAC) was replaced by a much bigger one. After lots of consternation and rummaging that started with the solution for 20.04's IAC, I've whittled at least the date/time part down to this:

Cool, though I'd still like to eliminate the "AM/PM" to shorten further (I get am/pm via other means).

To make this change I put these two commands into a Terminal window:

gsettings set org.ayatana.indicator.datetime time-format 'custom'
gsettings set org.ayatana.indicator.datetime custom-time-format '%a%d%l:%M%p'

Now, how can I remove the 3rd & 4th icons from the Left? Those seem to be related to Notifications & Keyboard (I'm using a USB wireless keyboard). Two apparently relevant new posts at the end of this old topic pointed me to using Dconf Editor on org.mate.panel.objects but that just shows a long list of items only identified by "Object" numbers that go clear up to "object-68" so more info would be quite helpful.

As you may notice by checking out those two prior topics linked above, the names of settings controlling these Panel options seems to have changed since the days of 20.04 to 22.04 from com.canonical.indicator to org.ayatana.indicator and possibly org.mate.panel.objects so unless someone shares suggestions or I can find further documentation it will take a grinding few days of possibly dangerous experimentation.
Help?

[JohnW]

Anyone familiar with the configuration string will have already seen that all I needed to do is lose the %p at the end of the second command. That and switching the %a%d to the right end of the string and adding a comma in front of it gives me this:

Here's what that new command looks like (the "custom" command is still in effect of course):

gsettings set org.ayatana.indicator.datetime custom-time-format '%l:%M,%a%d'

That already has me down to 1/5 of the Panel width. Now to just get rid of those two new icons...

[ironfoot]

Hi @JohnW,

Indicators are not listed as independent panel objects, because Indicator Applet Complete is a panel object and works as a container for them.
You are using a nondefault icon theme. I believe, a green mailbox icon is from ayatana-indicator-notifications, and the second one I can't recognize. You may want to open it and show its menu.
Anyway, in UM 22.04 it is possible to disable indicators from "Startup Applications". Just uncheck the indicator and reboot.

Hope this helps.

[JohnW]

Ironfoot, Thank You for such an exciting ray of hope!
Yes, I do have Ayatana so it's Great that I can just turn off that Indicator Notifications item. Alas, there's no Ayatana stuff in the Startup list:

I unclicked the "xapp..." item at the bottom and restarted hoping it might help, but of course it made that end of the Panel go a bit funky until turning it back on and doing two more restarts.

Dconf Editor finds Ayatana but can't fix the issue, and Ayatana's in the list from gsettings which has some interesting lines:

org.ArcticaProject.arctica-greeter indicators ['ug-accessibility', 'org.ayatana.indicator.session', 'org.ayatana.indicator.datetime', 'org.ayatana.indicator.power', 'org.ayatana.indicator.sound', 'ayatana-application']

The "gsettings set" command won't edit that line (just pops the Usage short list - maybe something to do with SCHEMADIR?), but the "power" item is interesting That rectangular icon that I thought was Keyboard seems to be about Power, because the two line items shown when clicked are Keyboard (opens keyboard Power Statistics), and Power Settings (nothing about removing the icon).

These next lines don't seem to help either:

org.ayatana.indicator.notifications do-not-disturb false
org.ayatana.indicator.notifications filter-list ['Spotify', 'NetworkManager', 'MATE Tweak']
org.ayatana.indicator.notifications filter-list-hints ['Software Boutique', 'notify-send']
org.ayatana.indicator.notifications max-items 1

But when changed with gsettings set, the do-not-disturb changes the icon's indication for that so Ayatana is clearly relevant but alas no way I've found to turn off those two icons.

Probably not of interest, there are some Cinnamon lines in the gsettings list, like this:

org.cinnamon.desktop.notifications display-notifications false

Perhaps left over from exploring other OS options before landing on UbuMate, and I thought installing UbuMate would wipe old stuff but maybe I should find a way to delete all the Cinnamon stuff?

While waiting and hoping for more ideas, I'm going to dig for ways to remove org.ayatana.indicator.power from org.ArcticaProject.arctica-greeter indicators and see if that does anything.

[ironfoot]

@JohnW

Alas, there's no Ayatana stuff in the Startup list

There is a checkbox to show hidden items in the startup list.

@JohnW

I'm going to dig for ways to remove org.ayatana.indicator.power from org.ArcticaProject.arctica-greeter indicators

I think this will only affect the greeter page, where you enter your username a password (it has top panel with indicators as well), not your actual session desktop.

@JohnW

These next lines don't seem to help either:

These are some settings to customize notifications indicator. They are available via Control Center -> Indicators -> Notifications as well.

[JohnW]

With the patient and tireless help of Ironfoot, I have stomped the two nagging indicators!

Indicators have now gone from 1/4 the width of my Panel, to 1/7. So small I enlarged it to share.

@ironfoot

some settings ... available via Control Center -> Indicators -> Notifications

I'd looked at those and didn't see anything that could remove those two icons. Of course, from the names and descriptions it's not entirely clear what many of them do. Rummaging the web before coming back to see your elegant simple solution, I saw that Ayatana is under active development and you seem to be involved. Kudos on the great work! I hope at some point the indicators will have a mouseover description and some simple "Off" in the pop-up, but meanwhile maybe this Topic will help other Panel-impaired icon fanatics.

[ironfoot]

You are welcome @JohnW!

I am glad you managed to configure your panel. By the way, I am not involved into Ayatana development. You may want to check Ayatana project page on Github to see the recent progress.

Cheers!