Tray icon

Stuff about tray icon. Feel free to contribute ;)

qTox supports several tray icon backends. Compiling with or without support for those is managed by flags passed to qmake

Backend	How to disable
KDE Status Notifier (requires GTK)	ENABLE_SYSTRAY_STATUSNOTIFIER_BACKEND=NO
Qt	-
Unity	ENABLE_SYSTRAY_UNITY_BACKEND=NO
GTK	ENABLE_SYSTRAY_GTK_BACKEND=NO

Which Tray backend works on which DE/WM.

DE/WM \ Backend	KDE Status Notifier	Qt	Unity	GTK
Cinnamon	✗	✔	✗	✗
GNOME	✗	✔	✔[1]	✔
i3	✗	✔	✔[1]	✔
KDE4	✔	✔	✔[1]	✔
KDE5	✔	✗	✗
Unity	✗	✗	✔	✗
XFCE		✔		✔
Tint2	✗	✔	✔[1]	✔
LXQt	✔ [2]	✔ [3]		✔
↑ some assembly required

[1] Works with problems, or limited features. #1245

[2] via lxqt-panel statusnotifier plugin #995

[3] via lxqt-panel tray plugin

Depending on runtime detection and compiled backend support, best tray backend will be used, in descending order:

• Unity (if DE is Unity)
• GTK (if DE is Gnome, KDE4 or Xfce)
• Status Notifier (if DE is KDE5)
• Qt

If you want to test whether different tray backend would work, qTox uses those variables to determine which backend should be used:

$XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP
$KDE_SESSION_VERSION

To start qTox with Qt backend:

$ XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP="" KDE_SESSION_VERSION="" qtox

---

Elementary OS doesn't support tray: https://github.com/tux3/qTox/issues/3072#issuecomment-215602168

---

You may wonder why all this mess. As always, there's a simple explanation:
“<tux3> Because system tray icons are completely broken. Each DE has it's own special way to make them work.”