Pokémon GO is ripping up the world right now, but trying to catch ’em all isn’t made easy thanks to continual server outages.
Any wannabe trainers among you have no doubt felt the frustration of heading off on a Pokémon hunt only to find the game server Koffing and Weezing under demand or, more often, grinding to a full-on Poké-stop.
It would be great if the game could sort itself out and work properly, but that won’t happen overnight.
In the meantime there is a neat little helper you can add to your Ubuntu desktop.
Pokémon GO Server Status Indicator for Linux
‘Pokemon GO Status’ is a small indicator applet for the Linux desktop. It enables you to check on the status of the Pokémon GO server before you head out to raid the nearest Pokestops, or search for another 389 Magikarp (you do want that Gyrados, right?).
An aptly named indicator, the python tool informs you when the server is up, when it is down, and Eevee if is up but running unstable.
It uses a traffic light colour scheme to denote the current Pokemon Go Server Status via its cute Pokéball icon:
- Green means the server is up
- Orange means the server is unstable
- Red means the server is down
Pokemon Go Server Status Indicator
Getting the indicator is fairly simple, though there’s no “one-click” installer (currently) available.
1. Download the latest release from GitHub:
2. Extract the .zip archive. Then use the command line to enter the folder like so:
cd ~/Downloads/pokemon-go-status-master
3. Finally, run the python script inside using:
python pokestatus.py
That should be all you need to do! The on-click menu with a ‘Quit’ option doesn’t appear for me, but it might for you.
Ruh-Oh
If you can’t get the applet to appear when running the python command above make sure you have the following packages installed:
sudo apt install python-indicate beautifulsoup4