Where did the status icons go in GNOME 3.26.x and what can I do to bring them back?

Question

I updated to the newest, 3.26.1, version of GNOME several hours ago, and I don't see the list of background applications that used to be located in the bottom-left corner of the screen, on a hidden sliding panel. The icons belonging to Audacious, VLC, Dropbox, Redshift and other applications I run in the background don't see anywhere in the screen.

I opened the Tweaks app (or equivalently the gnome-tweak-tool command) looking for relevant configurations with no results. What happened to this feature, and is there a way to have one similar to it if it is gone?

Source Status Icons and GNOME, Form and Function Allan Day's blog

Answer 1

The legacy tray was removed in 3.26 (it was a stop-gap measure, destined to be removed at some point, as explained in the corresponding bug). This is also mentioned in the release notes.

To see your indicator icons, you can use an extension such as TopIcons Plus.

Answer 2

TopIcons Plus is good extension, but I encountered a problem with gnome-shell 3.30.0-2. Although the extension was enabled, tray icons were not displayed on panel.

Here is workaround, how to fix it:

If you have extension installed, go to this directory:

~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/TopIcons@phocean.net

Open file extension.js in you favorite editor and change line 181 from this:

tray.manage_screen(global.screen, Main.panel.actor);

to this:

tray.manage_screen(Main.panel.actor);

Save file and reload Gnome with Alt+f2 and entering r or just simple logout.

Answer 3

You may use a GNOME shell extension called "KStatusNotifierItem/AppIndicator Support". It has features like

• Show indicator icons in the panel.
• Reveal indicator menus upon click.
• Double clicking an icon will activate the application window (if implemented by the indicator).
• Middle mouse click an icon to send a 'SecondaryActivate' event to the application. Support needs to be implemented in the application.

(from GitHub page)

But it fails to show some application icons, for example icons for electron based apps such as Skype.