ubuntu
Please update for Gnome 48
Hello there, I have CachyOS and after the Gnome 48 update a couple of days ago, the extension is not working anymore. It says it's unsupported. Thanks in advance.
There's already multiple pull requests for it - one in particular that does things very well. #564
People are just waiting for the owner / maintainers to merge the PR. In the meantime you could also just install it from the fork that contains the changes.
It will take awhile, usually it takes a few weeks for it to be updated.
why is this repo has not been updated in 7 months?
@rp1231 since thankjura implemented their fix directly on their fork's master, you can literally just use the instructions from the README and in the first line, replace the git repository URL with the one from: https://github.com/thankjura/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator
The clone URL would be: https://github.com/thankjura/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator.git
Since I'm on Arch Linux with the appindicator extension installed via pacman, I didn't need to do that. But for my PopOS 22.04 installations I used the mechanism from the README to install a specific version manually, that wasn't in the repos and it worked perfectly fine.
Also worth noting, depending on how you installed the extension previously, you might end up having two versions installed in different directories. In that case you would have to disable the old version.
Gnome extensions usually live in either of these directories, as far as I'm aware:
# global system-wide installs
/usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions
# local installs per user
~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/
Alternatively, if you don't have developer tools like git, meson, ninja installed, in this specific case you could also just replace your existing appindicator.js and metadata.json with the ones from the fork. This is possible in this specific case, since there were only technical changes and no user-facing texts have changed, therefore no compilation of the translation files is needed. Make sure to reload your gnome-shell afterwards (As mentioned in the readme: on X11 with ALT + F2 followed by the r command, on Wayland you need to log out and back in.)
Do this at your own risk, of course... Consider creating a backup of the old version.
@rp1231 since thankjura implemented their fix directly on their fork's master, you can literally just use the instructions from the README and in the first line, replace the git repository URL with the one from: https://github.com/thankjura/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator
The clone URL would be: https://github.com/thankjura/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator.git
Since I'm on Arch Linux with the appindicator extension installed via pacman, I didn't need to do that. But for my PopOS 22.04 installations I used the mechanism from the README to install a specific version manually, that wasn't in the repos and it worked perfectly fine.
Also worth noting, depending on how you installed the extension previously, you might end up having two versions installed in different directories. In that case you would have to disable the old version.
Gnome extensions usually live in either of these directories, as far as I'm aware:
# global system-wide installs /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions # local installs per user ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/Alternatively, if you don't have developer tools like
git, meson, ninjainstalled, in this specific case you could also just replace your existingappindicator.jsandmetadata.jsonwith the ones from the fork. This is possible in this specific case, since there were only technical changes and no user-facing texts have changed, therefore no compilation of the translation files is needed. Make sure to reload your gnome-shell afterwards (As mentioned in the readme: on X11 withALT + F2followed by thercommand, on Wayland you need to log out and back in.)Do this at your own risk, of course... Consider creating a backup of the old version.
how do you install appindicator with pacman i am also using arch? i can see the package in the package list but i dont know how to enable the extention or change its settings
@Rishabh-Sarang
Regarding your question:
why is this repo has not been updated in 7 months?
First of all the fact that it hasn't been updated in 7 months doesn't necessarily mean much.
The extension is fairly simple in its functionality, so it's not a big surprise that it's code base is pretty stable and doesn't require regular changes. A major GNOME release will oftentimes require some changes in extensions, while others can get away with just a mere version bump. In the case of appindicator for GNOME 48, there were some technical changes required as you can see in the PR #564 .
Furthermore, this is just a free open-source project like any other:
- the maintainers are just normal people with normal lives and usually work on such projects in their free time
- maintainers sometimes either lose interest or are simply too busy with more important stuff
- the maintainers and contributors basically provide free labor for everybody to enjoy
- it's open-source with a permissive license, so feel free to fork it yourself (or in this case just use the fork that already contains a fix, thanks to again: free labor from other people contributing)
- major GNOME releases sometimes take months or years to reach some Linux distributions, so not everybody is hit by version incompatibilities immediately: if you're on a bleeding edge distribution, you should know these potential pitfalls and ideally be comfortable doing manual workarounds to suit your needs
Regarding your question:
how do you install appindicator with pacman i am also using arch?
I'm using the extra/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator package, which received the fix even 3 or 4 days before GNOME48 made it into the stable pacman repos.
the maintainers are just normal people with normal lives and usually work on such projects in their free time
That doesn't really mean much when this is a project that is part of the company github account of one of the largest Linux corporations in the world. This is not a personal project; this is a Ubuntu project. If Canonical doesn't prioritize it's open source projects that's their own rights, but please don't excuse them by asking for free labor on their products. If you're on their payroll or not
In the end Canonical is making money off this project. Be it indirectly. This excuse is a common fallacy in situations where focus has shifted, like with Red Hat/IBM and recent Fedora developments. But ultimately it's a fallacy.
This might just be my opinion. You don't have to agree. But in the end this project falls under the 'Ubuntu' organization, thus this project represents the work of the Ubuntu organization.
@Rishabh-Sarang The extension is fairly simple in its functionality
- the maintainers are just normal people with normal lives and usually work on such projects in their free time
If the code is simple, just press the merge button on the PR request. The maintainers are Canonical employees. They don't have time to press the button? The GNOME 48 support PR is 3 months old already.
Interestingly, this project is mainly maintained by Ubuntu employees and is also used in the Ubuntu distribution as an important feature.
Even the packaging of this project in Ubuntu has been updated and now supports Gnome 48: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator
However, the project itself has been in a nearly half-year-long state of neglect. Contributors have been helping to fix bugs and submit patches, but no one is reviewing them. Perhaps the maintainers are simply too busy—so busy that they only have time to update the downstream Ubuntu packaging, but not enough time to maintain the upstream project.
Interestingly, this project is mainly maintained by Ubuntu employees and is also used in the Ubuntu distribution as an important feature.
Even the packaging of this project in Ubuntu has been updated and now supports Gnome 48: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator
Nice find - I also just saw yesterday that Ubuntu got it's 25.04 release with GNOME 48, so I was wondering if maybe that will trigger the PR to be finally merged... But since they already got it on Launchpad as a patch file referencing thankjura's PR, then maybe it will actually take even longer than expected for this upstream repo to get sorted.
I guess it's going to be best for people to install the extension through their distro's respective package manager. I would assume pretty much all distros that are on GNOME 48 already will have the patched version of the extension available.
From what I've seen in the posts here this is at least true for: Arch Linux, Fedora and now even Ubuntu itself (ironically)
Thanks for your feedbacks. I discovered that Fedora now package a patched and working fork of this extension.
If you use Fedora 42 :
- with « Extensions » apps : delete (not deactivate, delete) « AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem » if listed in user's extensions
- install extension from packaging :
sudo dnf install gnome-shell-extension-appindicator - close/open gnome session ; reactivate extension (if needed) in « Extensions apps »
In the meantime, you can edit the following file and add the Gnome version of 48 and it will then work:
nano ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/metadata.json
Under shell version just add 48:
"shell-version": [
"45",
"46",
"47",
"48"
],
Thanks for your feedbacks. I discovered that Fedora now package a patched and working fork of this extension.
If you use Fedora 42 :
* with « Extensions » apps : delete (not deactivate, delete) « AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem » if listed in user's extensions * install extension from packaging : `sudo dnf install gnome-shell-extension-appindicator` * close/open gnome session ; reactivate extension (if needed) in « Extensions apps »
This is a great solution! In the "Installed extensions" tab of the Gnome Extensions extension in Firefox gnome-shell-extension-appindicator now shows as a System extension. Which means it was installed through a package manager, nice!
