hi, everybody . . .
trying to deal with a problem with what is often called the system tray -- that little section at the right side of kicker that holds small icons that do stuff.
problem is that there used to be a little protonvpn icon there what let me know when the vpn was on and when it wasn't, by a little indicator attached to the icon itself.
at some point it disappeared and i cannot make it come back. i've dealt with proton tech support. sad to say, they're very good at seeming to deliver aupport without actually doing anything other than restate the obvious. so i need to dig it out myself.
i have *no* idea how the system tray thing works. so i do not have the first clue in tracking it down. anybody know what's necessary to get an application to register there and do what it's supposed to do? if I have a sense of that, i can try to work backwards and sort it.
thanks in advance.
i have *no* idea how the system tray thing works. so i do not have the first clue in tracking it down. anybody know what's necessary to get an application to register there and do what it's supposed to do? if I have a sense of that, i can try to work backwards and sort it.
Hi dep, not sure about the specific of how protonvpn interacts with the systray, but you can use tdedocker to dock any application to the systray in case nothing else work. Run protonvpn window, then run tdedocker and click the proton vpn window to dock it. Cheers Michele
First, thanks everyone who responded. I finally have a little time to start working through it, which I'm undertaking now, so I'll probably have a heap of questions.
said Michele Calgaro via tde-users:
| not sure about the specific of how protonvpn interacts with the systray, | but you can use tdedocker to dock any application to the systray in case | nothing else work. Run protonvpn window, then run tdedocker and click | the proton vpn window to dock it.
Thanks. This works and I'll use it as a fallback if I can't restore the original bahavior. The original Proton version had a useful status indicator. But in the swing of things that's not essential.
While I'm here, a warning: Before I set up Starlink and was stuck with the Arris router that the telephone company provided, the signal to the living room was not as strong as I liked, so I got an EDUP USB wifi antenna from Amazon. Oddly, it kept turning off the VPN (which, the way I have it set up also turns off the wifi itself into the machine). With the much stronger signal from the Starlink router, I was able to remove the Amazon antenna and suddenlt no more disconnects. Poking around, I found that it wasn't just an antenna but a whole Mediatek wifi card built in to the thing and using that in lieu of the Broadcom in the Raspberry Pi. Poking around further, it seems there are security concerns about the aii-on antenna/wifi circuitry. So, avoid! (Ultimately didn't matter here because everything was encrypted before it got transmitted, but was inconvenient.)
On 4/6/26 4:55 PM, dep via tde-users wrote:
i have*no* idea how the system tray thing works. so i do not have the first clue in tracking it down. anybody know what's necessary to get an application to register there and do what it's supposed to do? if I have a sense of that, i can try to work backwards and sort it.
The systray functionality is simply a small window compiled into the protonvpn program that is triggered when the close or minimize button is clicked instead of closing or minimizing to kicker. The application handles identifying itself as a systray app internally.
See:
https://api.kde.org/legacy/3.5-api/kdelibs-apidocs/kdeui/html/classKSystemTr...
There are only two possibilities, the first being the more likely,
1. there were changes in protonvpn so the systray functionality of the application is no longer seen by TDE, or 2. there were changes to TDE.
I'd start by double-checking with the protonvpn folks, or finding the git repo and looking at the commits between when it last worked and when it no longer worked for hints.
It may also be worth looking at the TDE logs or xsession-errors and see if anything is being reported as failing.
Sorry no solutions, but this hopefully gives a sense to how the ksystray works from the application standpoint.
dep via tde-users wrote:
i have *no* idea how the system tray thing works. so i do not have the first clue in tracking it down. anybody know what's necessary to get an application to register there and do what it's supposed to do? if I have a sense of that, i can try to work backwards and sort it.
Most apps have a config option to use or not to use systray. If support is compiled in and the option is enabled, they register in the systray.
If this is not possible, I would create a link on the desktop and use ksystraycmd. This will start the application and dock it in the systray.
deloptes via tde-users wrote on 4/7/26 1:55 AM:
dep via tde-users wrote:
If this is not possible, I would create a link on the desktop and use ksystraycmd. This will start the application and dock it in the systray.
FWIW, I'm running TDE 14.1.6~[DEVELOPMENT], and appear to have no ksystraycmd:
[ZB:ref-ssb] ksystraycmd treesheets -bash: ksystraycmd: command not found [ZB:ref-ssb]
Perhaps it's been removed from TDE at some point?
Doc
D. R. Evans wrote on 4/7/26 9:38 AM:
deloptes via tde-users wrote on 4/7/26 1:55 AM:
dep via tde-users wrote:
If this is not possible, I would create a link on the desktop and use ksystraycmd. This will start the application and dock it in the systray.
FWIW, I'm running TDE 14.1.6~[DEVELOPMENT], and appear to have no ksystraycmd:
[ZB:ref-ssb] ksystraycmd treesheets -bash: ksystraycmd: command not found [ZB:ref-ssb]
Perhaps it's been removed from TDE at some point?
I further note that it doesn't seem to be listed as an application included in TDE at: https://www.trinitydesktop.org/applications.php
It _is_ mentioned at https://www.trinitydesktop.org/faq/panel.php, which says: "For more information about ksystraycmd, see the section Advanced Window Management in the TDE User Guide". After digging around for a while, I found the TDE User Guide (I didn't finding it wasn't at all obvious to me), and that indeed has a section on ksystraycmd in the "Advanced Window Management" section. But there's no hint as to how to install it. A search for the string "ksystraycmd" using synaptic to search the name and description of TDE packages turned up no hits.
Doc
Anno domini 2026 Tue, 7 Apr 09:53:50 -0600 D. R. Evans via tde-users scripsit:
D. R. Evans wrote on 4/7/26 9:38 AM:
deloptes via tde-users wrote on 4/7/26 1:55 AM:
dep via tde-users wrote:
If this is not possible, I would create a link on the desktop and use ksystraycmd. This will start the application and dock it in the systray.
FWIW, I'm running TDE 14.1.6~[DEVELOPMENT], and appear to have no ksystraycmd:
[ZB:ref-ssb] ksystraycmd treesheets -bash: ksystraycmd: command not found [ZB:ref-ssb]
Perhaps it's been removed from TDE at some point?
It lives in /opt/trinity/bin/ksystraycmd
Nik
I further note that it doesn't seem to be listed as an application included in TDE at: https://www.trinitydesktop.org/applications.php
It _is_ mentioned at https://www.trinitydesktop.org/faq/panel.php, which says: "For more information about ksystraycmd, see the section Advanced Window Management in the TDE User Guide". After digging around for a while, I found the TDE User Guide (I didn't finding it wasn't at all obvious to me), and that indeed has a section on ksystraycmd in the "Advanced Window Management" section. But there's no hint as to how to install it. A search for the string "ksystraycmd" using synaptic to search the name and description of TDE packages turned up no hits.
Doc
Thierry de Coulon via tde-users wrote:
Running the same, I do have it. I had to install tdedocker (that I did not know). Nice little utility!
here it seems it is part of tdebase-trinity-bin
$ dpkg -S $(which ksystraycmd) tdebase-trinity-bin: /opt/trinity/bin/ksystraycmd $ dpkg -L tdebase-trinity-bin | grep ksystraycmd /opt/trinity/bin/ksystraycmd /opt/trinity/share/man/man1/ksystraycmd.1
On Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:55:16 +0000 dep via tde-users users@trinitydesktop.org wrote:
i have *no* idea how the system tray thing works. so i do not have the first clue in tracking it down. anybody know what's necessary to get an application to register there and do what it's supposed to do? if I have a sense of that, i can try to work backwards and sort it.
There was a change a couple of years ago to a major system-tray-supporting library used by third-party applications that made it incompatible with TDE at the time. Not sure whether that was ever fixed, or whether that has anything to do with your issue, but it might be worth searching the mailing list archives for stuff about the system tray.
E. Liddell
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D. R. Evans -
David C Rankin -
deloptes -
dep -
Dr. Nikolaus Klepp -
E. Liddell -
Michele Calgaro -
Thierry de Coulon