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Asinine

Member

Registered: 2020-06-20

Posts: 8

Why left click actions on notification area in panel differ by distro?

Hello folks.

I have noticed that on Mint, left clicking on my notification area (specifically Discord and Steam) brought up the same menu as right clicking. That is, if I have a notification on Discord, left clicking the icon will not bring up the window, but shows the "open discord, check for updates, exit" etc options. Steam does the same; instead of bring up the previously-opened window that I minimized, it shows me the list of options I have chosen.

I had Xubuntu installed about a month ago (which is when I first noticed this, as I was only running Manjaro before), and I noticed that instead of right click bringing up the options, it actually brought up the properties/panel options as though I right-clicked on an empty space on the panel.

On the contrary, in Manjaro and Arch the left click will open the window and the right click will open the options. This is the behavior I would prefer it to have on all my distros.

I have used the same separate /home drive for the three that are currently installed, and everything works well together. But Mint's left click acts differently. So I'm guessing this is some setting on its own partition.

Can anyone point me to where this could be, and/or how to change this behavior in Mint (and other distros in the future)? Thanks!

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,488

Re: Why left click actions on notification area in panel differ by distro?

Hello and welcome.

Double check which tray plugin you are using - there are 3 of them (notification area, indicator area, and status-notifier). I believe the status notifier plugin does what you are seeing (right-click brings up options). Notification area will display the functionality you are looking for.

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Asinine

Member

Registered: 2020-06-20

Posts: 8

Re: Why left click actions on notification area in panel differ by distro?

I would think the plugin is the same for all distros, as changing one's appearance (or icons or whatever) transfers to the others. All use the same /home drive so I figure they're saving the data there.

But it is "Notification Area", as seen here: https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/systray. The behavior on different distros varies though.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,488

Re: Why left click actions on notification area in panel differ by distro?

I would think the plugin is the same for all distros, as changing one's appearance (or icons or whatever) transfers to the others. All use the same /home drive so I figure they're saving the data there.

Interesting.

But it is "Notification Area", as seen here: https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/systray. The behavior on different distros varies though.

It shouldn't though. Can you share your panel settings?

xfconf-query -c xfce4-panel -lv

...from both distros?

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Asinine

Member

Registered: 2020-06-20

Posts: 8

Re: Why left click actions on notification area in panel differ by distro?

Sure, here they are.
Arch: https://pastebin.com/mXtTcM24
Mint: https://pastebin.com/hdD7vjUj

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,488

Re: Why left click actions on notification area in panel differ by distro?

With your Mint install, you also have an xapp-status-plugin that doesn't exist on your Arch install. I'm not familiar with this plugin. I installed Mint and discord in a VM and the tray icon gets consumed by this xapp status plugin. This is why there is a difference in functionality.

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Asinine

Member

Registered: 2020-06-20

Posts: 8

Re: Why left click actions on notification area in panel differ by distro?

Oh, hmm. Thanks for pointing that out. I'd noticed differences but it was past bedtime.

But dumb question: did you just compare and was that the main difference?

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,488

Re: Why left click actions on notification area in panel differ by distro?

But dumb question: did you just compare and was that the main difference?

It was the one difference that I was looking to confirm. I believe that systray has more options available though in its properties - but I don't recall what options existed for the xapp status plugin.

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Asinine

Member

Registered: 2020-06-20

Posts: 8

Re: Why left click actions on notification area in panel differ by distro?

I almost forgot to come back to reply: I tried removing that extra plugin but nothing changed.

Since then I've reformatted everything and started over. No problems anymore, as I'm using Manjaro. I'm still curious though...