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.
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I ran the mate-volume-control-status-icon and even created a desktop file for it at ~/.config/autostart
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In dconf-editor I changed /org/mate/power-manager/icon-policy to "always"
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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)
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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.