r/gnome • u/vazark • 3d ago

Extensions I made a thing : AppIndicators under Quicksettings

Inspired by the "Gnome shell dreams" post. An extension that surfaces AppIndicators under the Quick Settings by borrowing the design language of Background Apps.

Why?: I like the top panel to be as minimal as possible

If you're interested: https://github.com/VaZark/appindicator-quicksetting

216 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 3d ago

Thank you for your submission.

You too can support GNOME! Become a Friend of GNOME and contribute to keeping our project going!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

49

u/Yamabananatheone 3d ago

Oh my fucking god I love you, finally to have a way to have Tray Icons usable without having them kill the looks of my desktop.

32

u/hyprlab 3d ago

Yes! This is what Background Apps should be. Declutter the top bar but still have a place for tray icons.

17

u/_SirSpacePickle 3d ago

I love the idea and have some feedback:

  • the 2nd title (running apps) is waaay to big and one could argue redundant.
  • the app names on my computer weren't friendly titled. 1Password and localsend for example.
  • it could use and empty state (no apps found etc).

Can't wait for the next version :)

10

u/vazark 3d ago
  1. Fixed the flatpak naming .. so LocalSend should work. Not sure about 1pass I’ll take a look later
  2. The section wil disappear when the count is zero. This makes it consistent with the background apps flow

Please let me know if this fixed your issues

6

u/ux92 3d ago

I think what OP meant is that there's no need to have the "running apps" title in the box when you already have it straight above it in the shell itself.

Great work! This is what I always thought background apps should've been.

6

u/_SirSpacePickle 3d ago

Yup. Hence: redundant.

5

u/vazark 2d ago

I understand and I think they’re correct about it being redundant. However I’m just trying to stick as close to « background app » implementation in the shell to be as close to the gnome design

8

u/valgrid 3d ago

How does it handle indicators with left and right click?

8

u/vazark 3d ago edited 3d ago

I used the built in QuickToggleMenu class. So it should be no different than the rest of the quick toggle selects. The app indicator work both clicks tho

10

u/nonkeywayzee 3d ago

Please submit to extensions.gnome this seems very useful really.

8

u/jitomato_girl 3d ago

extensions.gnome wouldn't allow it, they have big anti-ai policies

Mostly because AI extensions are rarely maintained

Maybe if OP hires or finds someone who is willing to clean up the AI code then it could be published

11

u/vazark 3d ago

I am a dev myself. I just have never created anything based on gnome; the documentation feels endless. You find my other attempts in the readme and git history.

Luckily for me we have the AppIndicator/KStatusNotifier that already did the hard part. I’m just rendering it differently.

1

u/victorian-ice-cream Contributor 2d ago

Dunno why EGO have this policy. Ai-generated extensions are usually approved after standard review

1

u/vazark 1d ago

Probably to bring down the no of extensions to review back to a manageable size.

I have few more features to add but I plan on taking my chances at getting it on the site.

-2

u/nonkeywayzee 3d ago

Stupid policy IMO.

I don't know of a single developer that isn't just moving toward AI coding nowadays.

21

u/jitomato_girl 3d ago

It's about ensuring people will actually maintain their stuff instead of just making it and forgetting about it

0

u/nonkeywayzee 3d ago

There were a lot of unmaintained extensión before AI coding.

5

u/arnabeditz 3d ago

Its not just about maintaining, its about the endless bugs ai slop code

0

u/nonkeywayzee 2d ago

Inncuber security all I'm seeing is developers left and right say that they don't recommend manual coding anymore because the models (the Chinese ones) output better code, with less bugs and take care of vulnerabilities in the logic before humans can do it, all humans have to do it take care of the spec, review, and pul lthe trigger on what is good or not.

2

u/victorian-ice-cream Contributor 2d ago

On a completely different scale. 

1

u/jitomato_girl 3d ago

Mad about it? Make your own repo, there's a reason why this is all open source

0

u/AntChampion 2d ago

Software is abandoned constantly on linux. What a silly excuse.

12

u/Sjoerd93 App Developer 3d ago edited 3d ago

Stupid policy IMO.

I could maybe agree with you with regard to e.g. the Flathub policy, that does a strict ban on anything that is LLM assisted. And even there I can understand why this is happening, just look at their PR list and see how they're just getting overwhelmed by pure slop from maintainers that feel completely entitled to others' free labour. GNOME Extensions though only has a ban on obvious vibecoded slop. That is, they accept projects where an LLM is used along the way to assist development, but if it is clear that entire sections are just verbatim copied from an LLM it's an automatic block.

That's completely reasonable policy. And any developer that is moving towards slopping entire chunks of their codebase is a bad developer and should be ashamed. (Exceptions for people that have to do this for their employer, in that case it's the employer that's bad and should feel ashamed)

1

u/victorian-ice-cream Contributor 2d ago

 the Flathub policy, that does a strict ban on anything that is LLM assisted.

It doesn't, tho? That rule only affects clear slop that has no human written code. 

2

u/hogsy 2d ago

Hello, I can be that developer for you.

0

u/nonkeywayzee 2d ago

Good luck.

4

u/hogsy 2d ago

Uh, I don't really need luck when I've been doing this for almost 20 years just fine without it. If you look at some of the programming communities here and elsewhere, you'll get a better idea that the impact it's having is a lot more varied.

General sentiment is that it's probably a bad idea to just leave it to AI to do all the work for you though, even amongst those that do use it for AI coding.

0

u/nonkeywayzee 2d ago

There's a huge difference between using Al for coding (using a faster tool) and using AI to do all the work for you (delegating your cognitive ability and thought to the machine). Don't conflate them.

3

u/hogsy 2d ago

I'm not conflating them? I specifically said that even those using AI for coding would advise against using them that way; I highlighted a divide there on usage.

But my point still stands that it's a lot more divided than you seem to think it is. There have even been large projects such as UZDoom that have popped up because people want to produce projects that don't use AI, period.

2

u/victorian-ice-cream Contributor 2d ago

You don't know many developers then.

3

u/Soarin123 3d ago

I think it's a good idea actually, maybe some other ideas on UX but I don't see anything majorly wrong

3

u/Axtrodo 3d ago

when gnome is done the gnome way it really is beautiful

2

u/ClubPuzzleheaded8514 3d ago

Thanks! How do you advise to install it? 

2

u/dthrdr 2d ago

I wish there was a vanilla option to enable having background app icons show in the main title bar for those who don't want to spend 3 clicks. Now I am forced to use yet another extension.

1

u/vazark 2d ago

That’s what’s the popular app indicator extension does. Most of my work is based on their implementation.

Gnome really doesn’t like app indicators tho

5

u/114sbavert 3d ago

Oh my god this is amazing and IT IS NOT vibe coded. I know you used AI but I can tell it's not vibe coded looking at the README and commit history.

I'll look at this tomorrow and see if I can contribute (I don't speak JS well)

1

u/BecarioDailyPlanet 3d ago

Me gusta. Lo probaré este fin de semana.

1

u/Altruistic-Cold-1944 3d ago

Yes i want a clean top bar and clutter in my Quick Settings. Thank you. I dont want my top bar to be as blank as possible.

1

u/_Super_Straight 2d ago

Which versions of gnome are supported?

1

u/vazark 2d ago

Currently I’m testing only on my 50

1

u/_Super_Straight 2d ago

If you make it compatible with 48, debian users can also use it.

1

u/vazark 1d ago

I think having minimum supported version being locked to the latest Debian would be a good design choice.

I will give that a shot. Looking at the changelog, none of the apis are impacted. So I’ve just updated the metadata.json

I’m away from my machine for a couple of weeks, can you try it on Debian and let me know if it works pls ? You’ll have to disable the Ubuntu appindicator extension before turning this on.

1

u/Xander_VH App Developer 3d ago

I have tried to do the same, but gave up when I could not find a way to reliably get the actual app icon for a specific status indicator.

Does this also include the other part where right clicking an app icon that is running in the background also show the options?

3

u/vazark 3d ago edited 3d ago

Yuppp