Clementine panel icon

Clementine default panel icon in Ubuntu-MATE 16.04 is an animated icon of a mandarin slice that progressively changes to white as the track plays (along with a play or pause indicator in the top right corner). Not only is the icon too gaudy, but it doesn't even work well in dark themes.

I noticed that the official Clementine package in the repos installs a set of clementine-panel.png icons to /usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark and /usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-light directories, but apparently Clementine doesn't make use of them. I took a look at those icons and they are much better options.

Can these installed icons be used somehow?

I learned that Clementine icons have been hardcoded until recently. If the answer to the above is negative, is Clementine being updated on the repos on a regular basis so I can hope to have this new feature soon?

The developer PPA binaries don't play well with Ubuntu-MATE 16.04, and only the repo package works well. So, other than trying to build from source, I am dependent on the ubuntu repos.

/usr/share/icons/matefaenza/ has both png and svg for clementine

Thank you v3xx,

I guess then what I don’t know is how to make use of these icons. In other words, how to change Clementine tray presence to any of these icons?

The GUI is not set up for single icon so you would have to change the icon package in Appearance>customize>icons

I see what you mean. But that doesn’t change the indicator panel icon for Clementine.

I can see other icons changing in the indicator panel. But Clementine (along with other running applications like Claws Mail), don’t seem to make use of it.

Looks like you must use the github downloads.

I thought I give it a go and downloaded the developmental version 1.3.1-210-xenial.

And like you, I can change everything but the clementine icon. Later I want to try the github downloads.

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Update 1: Concerning the warning at the end of this post, Clementine dev builds still behaves badly on Ubuntu-MATE 16.04. After three hours of play, I can see now the same problems as before. The application doesn’t close gracefully and needs to be killed from the command line. The dev build PPA is still no advised and the older version Ubuntu repo package is the better option. Of course, that means I can’t change the panel indicator icon anymore. But oh well…


I went through that a few minutes ago. And it now works. I finally can customize the indicator panel icon for Clementine.

Posting here for future reference to other readers:

Step 1: Dev build PPA
Get the official Development PPA. Confirmed to be the official one here.

Step 2: Install the PPA as usual and install Clementine
Don’t forget to uninstall any existing Clementine version first

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:me-davidsansome/clementine-dev
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install clementine

Step 3: Clementine icon sets
Get the Clementine icons sets and install by following the instructions here

Step 4: Done.

Note:
If you want to only change the indicator panel icon:
I’m not actually interested in any of these icons. Just on the indicator panel icon. The application window icons are otherwise fine. By observing the folder structure of the icons in Step 3 and after a few quick tests, in order to change only the indicator panel icon, this is what I do:

  1. As per instructions in Step 3, create the directory ~/.config/Clementine/customiconset.
  2. Inside this directory create an icons directory.
  3. Inside this icons directory, create 3 folders: 22x22, 32x32, and 48x48.
  4. In each one of these directories I can place the indicator panel icon files:
    a) clementine-panel.png -> the icon as it is displayed when player is stopped .
    b) clementine-panel-grey.png -> an overlay that slowly replaces the previous icon as the song plays.
    c) I can make both icons the same to remove the animation.
  5. Two levels up, inside the customiconset directory, I can place two other icons:
    a) tiny-pause.png -> an overlay icon (22x22) that will be scaled down by the application and represents the play symbol, which will be displayed on the top right of the indicator panel icon when the player is playing.
    b) tiny-pause.png-> same thing but for when the player is paused.
    c) If I don’t place these two overlay icons, they will be changed to the default ones, which is a no-no!. So if I don’t need/want these two overlays, I just create two fully transparent 22x22 png images and name them accordingly.

And that’s it.

I will be drawing my own icons sometime later, or just grab something out there and will post in here.

Warning!

The dev builds in this PPA were not playing nice with Ubuntu-MATE 16.04 until recently. That’s why I moved to the ubuntu repos package when I when I recently changed from Linux Mint to Ubuntu-MATE. They are apparently fine now, since I have been using them for a couple of hours and everything seems normal. But in any case… here’s the warning. Otherwise, the dev builds have been rock solid for me in the 12 months since I started using Clementine.

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