I want to use Notification Area instead of Indicator Complete

[bamm]

Here's what I did.

My mate-panel has both a notification area and an indicator applet.

My goal is to bring most things back to the notification area.

1. I ran the mate-volume-control-status-icon and even created a desktop file for it at ~/.config/autostart

2. In dconf-editor I changed /org/mate/power-manager/icon-policy to "always"

3. Of course, I put back the beautiful clock applet. (I don't use Evolution btw, and I don't want to use it, and I will not use it just so the clock indicator will have some semblance of usefulness)

4. I uninstalled the following indicators, which I don't want. And everything that comes with them.
   sudo apt purge indicator-datetime
   sudo apt purge indicator-session
   sudo apt purge indicator-notifications
   sudo apt purge indicator-power
   sudo apt purge indicator-sound
   sudo apt autoremove --purge

I now have a beautiful panel that looks just as before, except for one thing:

Running the nm-applet no longer puts an icon in the notification area. So I have to keep the indicator applet just for nm-applet, which results in an icon with a different size and width, and which cannot be changed by modifying the file "THEME/gtk-3.0/apps/mate-applications.css"

I would appreciate if I could find a way to put nm-applet into the Notification Area as before.

I will not remove the Indicator Applet, btw. I want to keep it there but empty by default, in case there might be some apps that will use it. I just want to remove the most common things (NM, Volume, and Power) and enable them in the NA.

I don't want to elaborate on my issues with Indicators. I'm not trying to solve them (that would be a different question). What I'm trying to do for now is to restore the familiar look of the panel I have been using for years.

Thanks for any help.

[busybody]

I did that once and it worked for me:

About Notification Area and Indicator Applet Complete

OK, so you disabled something and broke it If you remove mate-indicator-applet from the panel then you need to set enable-sni-support to True in org/mate/panel/general using dconf-editor.

I had to restart and/or recreate a new panel, I think, not sure.

Note that some applications don't work the same way if they are in the notification area. For instance, when I use Variety Wallpaper Changer with the the indicator applet, I can change my wallpaper with the mouse wheel, which is not possible in the notification area.

I tried to keep the indicator applet empty by default but It seemed not possible to add it to the panel. So it's still there with just the nm-applet. It's OK that way for me.

[bamm]

Hey thank you! What does enable-sni-support do? Does it allow nm-applet to open in NA instead of IA?

I didn't know that the indicator applet cannot be empty. I hope they fix that and allow it.

More importantly, instead of deprecating NA and transitioning to IA, they should allow us to choose between the two implementations.

Current system really feels like a workaround: making apps choose one instead the other and having users have both in case of some apps supporting one and not the other.

I think apps should support both and let users (and distro developers) decide which one to use. The current system breaks the consistency in my desktop.

Thanks again!

[bamm]

Update: I set the enable-sni-support to true as you mentioned and it worked! The nm-applet loaded at the NA instead of the IA. I could not tell though if the IA is there but empty, or if it didn't load due to having no icons using it. I don't know how I can tell.

I'm happy with this so far and thanks for pointing this out.

[Philippe]

When finished to customize the panel, lock it:

Lock and unlock the panel with a click

It's handy to know that the panel can be locked in order not to delete launchers or panel by mistake (and you have to do it again from scratch). Once locked, if you right-click on launchers or panel, the menu option "remove" does not appear, so you can not accidentally click on and the panel will not allow any changes to the configuration. Of course, to do maintenance (move and create launchers, see properties, create / delete panels …) it must be unlocked. To get this …

[lundgren]

This works for me until a reboot to two, then I have to go through and remove the panels and recreate them to get it working again.

I haven't been able to make it work for an extended time.

[sgage]

I removed everything ayatana. I have a few things on my top panel - show desktop, the clock, volume thing, and redshift. If I run hexchat or pithos, their notification icons go up there as well. I got rid of the bottom panel and use plank. Been running like this for years.