Tdesktop: [Linux] Use more specific & more integrated alternatives for status icon

[csoriano1618]

Hello,

Carlos from Linux & GNOME here. We are trying to approach important apps using status icons to provide better alternatives that are more integrated with the system. Status icons have been deprecated for some time and we plan to remove the systray for GNOME 3.26.

Currently Telegram uses status icon for:

1. Notify of incoming messages
2. Quit application
3. Disable notifications
4. Minimize to tray
5. Open app

For 1, the proper approach is to use native notifications. Telegram has a setting for this, but it's off by default. The solution would be to enable this on by default, so the user benefits from the notification integration.
This will allow the user to see whether the user has any pending messages in a permanent place, and also disable notifications if desired in a grained way.
I filed issue #3831 separately to discuss the notification implementation. Documentation for native notifications can be found here.
For 2, the recommended approach is to ask the user if the application should run in the background the first time it click the close button, then enable a setting with "run in the background". The user can deactivate it anytime if changes user's mind.
An example would be Polari, and IRC client. The dialog looks like:

For 3, would be fixed with 1, and will use the system wide settings and integration for notifications, instead of something for every app in the system.
For 4, won't be needed if 2 is implemented.
For 5, it happens when a notification is clicked, or if the app is run again from the recent app list or from any place where apps can be searched & run

Something to note here is that these solutions are cross-desktop, so it should work for any Linux distribution.

Let me know what do you think and feel free to ask any question!

Thanks

[stek29]

Quit application

Ctrl+Q

Disable notifications

It's in settings

[fbruetting]

@csoriano1618 I’m wondering, what the GNOME view of the message aggregation indicator of Unity is? Since messages are usually more important than other (non-permanent) notifications, one can separate urgent cases from the minor ones. Also this would target a whole class of use cases (mails, instant messages, IRC, Twitter, etc. pp.). The benefits I see are:

• Not as crowded as a list of mixed notifications about all kinds of things in the notification center.

• For instant messaging services, people usually respond very quickly – while most people (I know of) just look sparsely into the notification center. Missing instant messaging notifications prevents messaging being instant.

• One should be able to mark notification sources as inactive. E.g. receiving E-Mails should not light up the message indicator, because most mails are not that important. You should still see the number of unread mails of every mail account when you click the indicator, but this way you won’t be compelled clicking the indicator. Received instant messages should indeed light it up like it’s done on everybody’s mobile – but this won’t be as obtrusive as a notification popping up. One then would be able seeing all unread messages of all sorts of messaging sources all together in a clean and unified way.

• I think that communication is so important, that it deserves it’s own icon in the top panel. Maybe this aggregation could be implemented inside the notification center, instead of making up a separate indicator, but communication overview should really be separated from other notifications.

• This approach could solve all mentioned issues and introduce more coherence into desktop environments when a corresponding libmessaging could be provided, like this new libcloudproviders.

[diazbastian]

@csoriano1618 I would also like to see native notifications by default, but currently Telegram notifications offer better features. On the other hand there is no native solution for voice calls (eg something similar to the implementation of MPRIS in Gnome, where you can accept/deny a call and view its status persistently without go to the app window) . The above example would also work for any other voice and video application (Ring, Skype, Viber, Gajim, Jitsi, etc.).

_Note: You may be interested in the ticket_ 279 _of transmission_.

[csoriano1618]

Thanks for the feedback and questions so far. I'll answer them soon, I'm evaluation the questions with our designers and other developers to provide accurate answers, sorry for taking long :)

[Aokromes]

2191 ?

[aruiz]

Hey @csoriano1618, any progress on this? :-)

[csoriano1618]

Hey,

Sorry for the late answer. Indeed, Telegram has a good point that native notifications doesn't implement an easy way to reply inline. GNOME actually wants that too, so it's a matter of working on extending the protocol.

[cold-distance]

Hi, I saw this bug report so I will take it to make a suggestion.

I use Fedora with GNOME with vanilla experience now, so I don't have status icons or systray.

It would be wonderful if Telegram Desktop could be closed only with the close button. The only thing needed is to have an option in settings to disable systray/status icon support at least for Linux.

[jhasse]

There is.

[fbruetting]

@csoriano1618 What about your answers? :P

Thanks for the feedback and questions so far. I'll answer them soon, I'm evaluation the questions with our designers and other developers to provide accurate answers, sorry for taking long :)

[csoriano1618]

Hey,

I was rereading now the comments. I think I answered the most important one, which is what about inline reply. Last time we discussed it we indeed wanted that, and we would like to extend the protocol to include it if possible.

For the design of the "notification center" in GNOME Shell, that's probably not very important here, since it's up to the DE how to interpret those notifications. That probably isn't much of a requirement either, since Telegram doesn't implement the proposed design currently either.

On the other hand there is no native solution for voice calls

Wouldn't a notification with two actions (accept, deny) be the solution for this?

Is there anything I'm missing? I'll be glad to get an answer for those.

[fbruetting]

Ah, I thought you can speak for Gnome about a messaging center concept. 😄

[diazbastian]

Wouldn't a notification with two actions (accept, deny) be the solution for this?

@csoriano1618
Maybe, but I was referring to an implementation more similar to that found on mobile devices (persistent notification).
For example in Android, if we don't answer immediately or we are occupying another app, you can accept a call from a notification or the notification center, the same to stop or cancel a call. This also applies to other apps that include calls and allow you to do this without having to bring the app to focus. The most common options are accept/decline /mute microphone.

[csoriano1618]

This also applies to other apps that include calls and allow you to do this without having to bring the app to focus.

Yeah that makes sense, there has been some discussion about putting actions on the notification center.

I'm not sure this is in scope of this issue tho... the native notification issue is at https://github.com/telegramdesktop/tdesktop/issues/3831. But also, Telegram notifications cannot do this kind of thing right now either, it would need collaboration with the DE, and indeed it would be amazing to improve that. With this issue I'm more focusing in covering what the current Telegram notifications provide and make sure those are ok, so Telegram can transition to native notifications without big issues.

[curious0101]

Two years and still not fixed? What is going on?

[GabVenturato]

@Aokromes @csoriano1618 I think the problem now is that in Gnome (I am referring to my experience in Fedora 30, you can read more in che closed issue referred above) I have no option to have telegram closed when the close button is pressed! If I want to close telegram I have to kill the process by CLI. Is there a fix for this? Because it seems to me that the situation is a bit neglected.

[jhasse]

@GabVenturato "Settings" -> "Advanced" -> Uncheck "Show tray icon"

edit: after reading #6412 I understand your problem: The option isn't there for you in GNOME.

[cold-distance]

@GabVenturato "Settings" -> "Advanced" -> Uncheck "Show tray icon"

edit: after reading #6412 I understand your problem: The option isn't there for you in GNOME.

I just checked and I see that the problem persists. It's very annoying.

[GabVenturato]

@jhasse yeah, that's exactly the problem

[DarkFenX]

6692 was created by me. Needless to say, I am annoyed by lack of tray icon.

My use-case: I use telegram at work as IM for personal purposes. So, I keep it open, with tray icon shown (via TopIcons). When I focus on my task - I do not want any kind of popups to distract me (let alone fellow coworkers looking at content of notifications, should they look at my display). However, when I have a moment, I take a look at the tray and see if there're any unread discord/telegram notifications (indicator is handled by apps themselves - it allows to filter out muted chats which i consider completely irrelevant while I am at work; I check them very rarely by opening full app).

And it worked just fine, until today.

@csoriano1618, how should I approach my use-case within "new" gnome paradigm?

edit: Another use-case. It also might be good to indicate status of various apps. For example, I have set up synchronization of data for several apps via dropbox. When I am using this app, it constantly changes said data and dropbox syncs it with cloud. Status icon shows if dropbox is in process of a sync or not; when finishing my work, I look at its status. Once data is synced, I put my PC to sleep. When I come back, I wake the PC up, wait for data to sync and then launch app once again (to avoid sync conflicts).

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