I'm never going to understand why desktop environments don't support app indicators. In particular GNOME, which is meant to be accessible to a broader audience.

This was the reason I switched to KDE Plasma, which is excellent these days.

In what way is Gnome meant to be accessible to a broader audience? They clearly do not give that impression; a broader audience would be interested in tray icons, desktop icons, theming support — ideas they clearly reject.

I mean, with such a bad-faith read of what I said; you'd have to be right.

We are in agreement. No need to twist words about to make it seem like we aren't.

If I look at my Windows system tray, it's full of random crap that I never look at and never need to. Windows has to have functionality to automatically hide icons you don't interact with. I can see why Gnome has decided just to do away with the concept.

Interesting. So if I wanted to use dropbox without a desktop environment, I'd need to fake a tray, so it can pretend to put an icon in there?

(I normally use XMonad, and it's very far from a complete desktop environment. It's only a fairly minimal window manager.)

There seems to be a headless mode with lower requirements (scroll to the bottom and expand the Q about headless). This is for the ”full desktop experience”.

Oh, that makes sense. Thanks!