GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 750626
Show the thin systray handle only if mouse is close by
Last modified: 2018-09-25 14:09:30 UTC
Currently [1], systray displays a thin black "handle" rectangle in the bottom left screen corner, when it is in its closed state. This handle has the following problems: a) if you don't know about it, you're not going to spot it unless there's a very bright background underneath (during 3.16 release, I looked for it several times and could not find it, until I saw a screenshot). This has been later improved by auto-expanding the tray for a brief moment when a new icon is put inside it, so discoverability is much better now. b) if you know about it, it's distracting in certain situations. For example, a small part of the command prompt is blocked by it. Or if you have a white page displayed in the browser, you see something small and dark the in bottom left corner. So overall the handle doesn't add much discoverability, but is sometimes obscuring and distracting. What do you think about having it completely hidden by default, and showing it only if the mouse cursor gets near it? That solves most of "obscuring" cases, and it does not affect discoverability too much. If you have seen the systray slide forth and back in the bottom left corner, you're going to grab the cursor and get near the corner to find out what's going on. And if you haven't seen it, you're not likely to find the systray anyway. The distance to show the handle could probably best be defined as max(absolute px value, display size fraction), so e.g. (random numbers here) max(100px,width/8px). The handle would show when the cursor moved to the bottom left area of 1/8 of the screen size, at least 100x100px. I believe this will increase user satisfaction with systray functionality. There are little annoyances here and there which cause some dissatisfaction overall, but if we fix the tiny details one by one, the systray might get much better than the original message bar from GNOME 3.14. Thanks! [1] gnome-shell-3.16.2-1.fc22.x86_64
I was wondering if the legacy tray behaviour could emulate, as an option that could be set on Tweak Tool, as a auto-hide tray like docky or plank - completely hidden until the mouse hovers over the hot corner. The 'discoverability issue' is IMHO well-balanced with the https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=746025 final commit so that wouldn't hurt.
Additionally I suggest to make the position configurable. For me it is really troublesome to spot things in the lower left corner of the screen because I have a "blank spot" in my visual field. Being able to move the legacy tray to the lower right corner would greately improve its usability to me.
(In reply to Martin Lorenz from comment #2) > Additionally I suggest to make the position configurable. > For me it is really troublesome to spot things in the lower left corner of > the screen because I have a "blank spot" in my visual field. > Being able to move the legacy tray to the lower right corner would greately > improve its usability to me. Good point. I had another idea: the legacy tray to function as a dock whose default behaviour is 'intellihide' - it would always show up when an application that uses a systray icon appear. And it remains there until a window gets on its way / is maximize and in this case the tray would appear if and only if the mouse pointer is close by. Then via gnome-tweak-tool one could change legacy tray behavior to 'always show up' and 'autohide', just like most docks out there.
Legacy Tray Handle obscures text in fullscreen terminal windows. Legacy Tray should be in the top bar somewhere. Stop hiding it. All of your ideas for hiding are not usable.
There is no legacy tray anymore.