Nimble GNOME-based Budgie desktop environment has gained support for indicator applets.
A raft of well-known software, including Dropbox, Skype and Clementine, use indicator applets to provide tray-based access to various features, info and options.
A swathe of indicator-only third-party utilities are also available, able to display weather forecasts, emails counts and more directly on the panel.
But until now the Budgie desktop did not support handling of app indicators.
That’s fixed. App Indicator support is now available for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.10 Budgie desktop users.
Budgie Remix’s developers say the new app indicator applet should be used on its own, in place of the regular system-tray applet, i.e. do not run both side-by-side.
It’s also important to keep in mind that this is an early release, and that some advanced settings or enhancements may be missing.
Features planned for future releases include the ability to change indicator order and support to enable the applet to work alongside the standard system-tray applet.
Install & add the applet
We wrote a guide a few months back about how to install Budgie desktop on Ubuntu. If you don’t have the desktop already installed you should follow the instructions in that post.
You need the official Budgie Remix PPA added to your Software Sources to install this new applet as it’s not available with the version of Budgie that’s available from the Ubuntu archives in Yakkety.
Assuming you do — if you don’t follow the aforementioned how-to — open a new Terminal and run the following command to first update your software sources so that it knows the new applet is available, and then install it:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install budgie-indicator-applet
Once the commands above have completed you can move on to adding the applet.
Open the Raven sidebar and enter the applet editor to add the app indicator applet and choose its position on the panel. Remember to remove the System Tray applet.
Get Involved
You can learn more about this new app indicator applet, file bugs or report broken features, as well as help contribute code to make it even more capable, by heading to the ‘budgie-indicator-applet’ Github page.