Creating a Linux app with Tray Icon only

[aleDsz]

Hi, I've plans (on my own) to allow Livebook Desktop App to be built for Linux distros and I've looking into some GUI library projects to create a single binary for many distros it can run, but it's kinda hard to have a GUI that works everywhere (only Linux in this case).

This is an example of how we works in MacOS, which is only the system tray icon with a menu and all these actions interacts with an Elixir API. And we already have a .NET implementation for Windows.

That said, is there a way to create a Linux app with tray icon + menu? If yes, a tiny example would help :)

Also, I'm open to any suggestion.

[DesLandysh]

I guess it would depended on what kind window manager you will use.
that's example for Gnome: AppIndicator, it uses gnome-extensions, maybe also you should get libs for GTK-3 or GTK-4
for Mate, LFCE or KDE - the most popular WMs - it definitely has own solutions, also you should know that these ones uses X.org/X-system protocol, but Gnome uses Wayland protocol, however for mate/lfce/kde it should be easier:
that's for KDE: PlasmaSystemTray widget

[gen2brain]

@aleDsz Nowadays old X system tray protocol is not used. You can use D-Bus/libdbus and StatusNotifierItem to set the icon, see https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/StatusNotifierItem/. The problem is, for the menu, you will need some toolkit, like GTK or Qt, and that means you must somehow integrate into their main loop.