Linux (KDE) tray icon is not showing

[antibios]

Description

In Linux element desktop application, the system tray icon does not show itself.

Steps to reproduce

• Launch application
• Look for system tray icon in list (and check hidden icons)

Describe how what happens differs from what you expected.

• I would expect to see the icon in the system tray, either hidden or not hidden.

Log: sent/not sent? Yes

Version information

• Platform: web (in-browser) or desktop? Desktop

Operating System: Kubuntu 20.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.18.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.68.0
Qt Version: 5.12.8
Kernel Version: 5.4.0-66-generic
OS Type: 64-bit
Processors: 8 × Intel® Xeon® CPU E3-1545M v5 @ 2.90GHz
Memory: 62.7 GiB of RAM

For the web app:

N/A
For the desktop app:

• OS: Kubuntu 20.04
• Version: Element version: 1.7.22 olm version: 3.2.1

[SimonBrandner]

I can't reproduce this with:

Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.20.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.78.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2

[SimonBrandner]

@antibios, does this happen with other Electron apps (e.g. Discord, Slack)?

[antibios]

I have slack running. This has been working fine for me over a number of months and is only recently it has broken.
This is a screenshot of element-desktop running in the background but not displaying on the tray.

I used the element debug option to send logs to this github issue

I closed slack and reopened element and tray icon was still not displayed.

I noticed that a number of element processes were open in the background

The following processes are running:
mike 3549 0.2 0.3 5941424 219308 ? SLl Mar19 19:39 /opt/Element/element-desktop --hidden mike 3613 0.0 0.0 204976 46064 ? S Mar19 0:00 /opt/Element/element-desktop --type=zygote --no-zygote-sandbox mike 3614 0.0 0.0 204976 46284 ? S Mar19 0:00 /opt/Element/element-desktop --type=zygote mike 3637 0.0 0.0 204976 11888 ? S Mar19 0:00 /opt/Element/element-desktop --type=zygote mike 3852 0.3 0.2 558832 171716 ? Sl Mar19 30:04 /opt/Element/element-desktop --type=gpu-process --field-trial-handle=10111905719154798147,7808751595765701118,131072 --enable-features=WebComponentsV0Enabled --disable-features=CookiesWithoutSameSiteMustBeSecure,SameSiteByDefaultCookies,SpareRendererForSitePerProcess --gpu-preferences=OAAAAAAAAAAgAAAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIAAAAAAAAAA== --shared-files mike 3862 0.1 0.1 303292 84356 ? Sl Mar19 12:34 /opt/Element/element-desktop --type=utility --utility-sub-type=network.mojom.NetworkService --field-trial-handle=10111905719154798147,7808751595765701118,131072 --enable-features=WebComponentsV0Enabled --disable-features=CookiesWithoutSameSiteMustBeSecure,SameSiteByDefaultCookies,SpareRendererForSitePerProcess --lang=en-GB --service-sandbox-type=network --standard-schemes=vector --enable-sandbox --secure-schemes=vector --bypasscsp-schemes --cors-schemes --fetch-schemes=vector --service-worker-schemes --streaming-schemes --shared-files=v8_context_snapshot_data:100 mike 3863 0.0 0.0 276480 28960 ? S Mar19 0:00 /opt/Element/element-desktop --type=broker mike 3881 0.2 0.3 19474256 237960 ? Sl Mar19 19:08 /opt/Element/element-desktop --type=renderer --field-trial-handle=10111905719154798147,7808751595765701118,131072 --enable-features=WebComponentsV0Enabled --disable-features=CookiesWithoutSameSiteMustBeSecure,SameSiteByDefaultCookies,SpareRendererForSitePerProcess --lang=en-GB --standard-schemes=vector --enable-sandbox --secure-schemes=vector --bypasscsp-schemes --cors-schemes --fetch-schemes=vector --service-worker-schemes --streaming-schemes --app-path=/opt/Element/resources/app.asar --preload=/opt/Element/resources/app.asar/src/preload.js --context-isolation --background-color=#fff --enable-spellcheck --enable-websql --disable-electron-site-instance-overrides --num-raster-threads=4 --enable-main-frame-before-activation --renderer-client-id=4 --no-v8-untrusted-code-mitigations --shared-files=v8_context_snapshot_data:100 mike 19091 0.0 0.0 522300 54312 ? Sl Mar19 0:07 /opt/Element/element-desktop --type=utility --utility-sub-type=audio.mojom.AudioService --field-trial-handle=10111905719154798147,7808751595765701118,131072 --enable-features=WebComponentsV0Enabled --disable-features=CookiesWithoutSameSiteMustBeSecure,SameSiteByDefaultCookies,SpareRendererForSitePerProcess --lang=en-GB --service-sandbox-type=none --standard-schemes=vector --enable-sandbox --secure-schemes=vector --bypasscsp-schemes --cors-schemes --fetch-schemes=vector --service-worker-schemes --streaming-schemes --shared-files=v8_context_snapshot_data:100

I killed all element processes and restarted element.
killall element-desktop

Tray icon is now available

Please let me know if I can help in log collection, otherwise I'm happy that I've got a work around if it happens again.

[shivajiva101]

Same issue on Kubuntu 22.04

Launching Element via the menu entry does make the window show and toggling 'Show tray icon and minimise window to it on close' in settings works at that point. The point of failure seems to be on startup and adding a delay to the launch makes it show some of the time but not always. It was working perfectly until I changed to the low latency kernel fwiw.

Update:
The reason adding a startup delay doesn't really work is due to presumably element rewriting the entry between starts, removing the delay, not sure why it has to reassert itself and is it really necessary if that is the case?

As a quick fix for the issue I created a simple login script with a 10 second delay before it launches element-desktop and unchecked Settings/Preferences/Start automatically after system login. Now it starts cleanly with the tray icon present every time!

Fwiw: in a bash script detecting when plasmashell has loaded and immediately starting the app at that point gives the same outcome as using the setting in Element i.e. no tray icon but app processes running

[t3chguy]

Closing in favour of #23993