pidgin icon does not appear in the System Tray on kde 5

[Abel N. Decaroli]

Since upgrading to Ubuntu 15.04 pidgin does not appear in the System Tray area. As additional information I can say that is not the only, but applications such as skype or dropbox neither do.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
Package: pidgin 1:2.10.9-0ubuntu8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.19.0-16.16-generic 3.19.3
Uname: Linux 3.19.0-16-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.17.2-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: KDE
Date: Sat May 16 00:19:41 2015
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-05-16 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" - Release amd64 (20150422)
SourcePackage: pidgin
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Janky Jay, III (ek-8)]

Affects me too. Same problem. No systray icon so must leave the contacts window "open" at all times otherwise it will exit the application.

[emanaton (9-launchpad-emanaton-com)]

Same here. Just did a fresh install of Kubuntu 15.04 and installed pidgin. It launches and runs fine, but doesn't not dock to systray no matter what settings are set in Tools->Preferences->Interface.

[emanaton (9-launchpad-emanaton-com)]

FYI, a suboptimal but effective workaround in the mean time is to install and enable the "pidgin-libnotify" plugin. After doing so, you can close the buddy window and the chat window(s) stay open; the downside is that it's still not in the systray, and if you need to get back to the buddy window, you have to "re-launch" pidgin (which appears to detect the current running instance and switches you to it).

[Elias Probst (eliasp)]

This is not so much a KDE Plasma 5 issue, but more an issue of legacy applications still not supporting a reasonable systray protocol (SNI).
There are workarounds like [sni-qt](https://launchpad.net/sni-qt), but this won't help with crippled/statically linked applications like Skype.

For more details on what's going on here, see this blog post by KDE's kwin developer Martin Gräßlin: http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2014/06/where-are-my-systray-icons/

I'm undecided whether distributions should really put effort in workarounds for legacy apps or instead should put pressure on the upstream of those projects to finally adopt SNI.
- In one case, the user experience might suffer when a user expects an application to continue to work as "it always did"
- In the other case, it keeps the whole ecosystem from finally adopting modern best practices and communicates to upstream projects "it's fine to use outdated technologies".

[Gabriele Tozzi (gabriele-tozzi)]

I think for me and most users having something that works on am old sub-optimal protocol is better than having a shining modern protocol that nobody yet adopted.

Please fix this.

[ernieg92 (ernieg92)]

I would love to see this fixed as well. I have found this workaround:
While the buddy list is open, right-click on the task in the Task Manager panel. There should be an option that says "Show a launcher when not running" which I have selected. I launch Pidgin once per session, then keep it in the quick launch area. New chats pop up a notification--in the system tray--which I then open up. YMMV.

[eridal (eridal)]

Searching the web I've found they all talk about whitelisting 'all' using different approaches, but haven't work on my fresh ubuntu 15.10.

Is there any know workaround?

[Igor (4eppelin)]

This article describes how to install ubuntu-specific pidgin plugin for tray icon:

http://www.webupd8.org/2014/01/pidgin-indicator-ubuntu-appindicator.html