Customize tray icon

[bmp]

Hello,

I have the following two icons I am using:

I am able to change icons based on the https://www.betterbird.eu/expert-tips/index.html when I use the application from source.

How can I customize the tray icon when I use the flatpak?

[mfschumann]

For the flatpak version of Betterbird to pick up the icons, they

• must reside in the subfolder icons/hicolor/scalable/status below any of the directories in $XDG_DATA_DIRS (spec).
• must be named eu.betterbird.Betterbird-default.svg and eu.betterbird.Betterbird-newmail.svg, respectively.

On my computer, $XDG_DATA_DIRS starts with two folders where flatpak puts the icons of the installed apps (.../flatpak/exports/share). I would not recommend messing around in these folders since eventually a flatpak update will restore the original state. Instead, prepend a custom folder to $XDG_DATA_DIRS and put the custom icons in there according to the two requirements above (correct subfolder, correct name).

[bmp]

So, here is what I have done,

1. Setup $XDG_DATA_DIRS and restarted session

   echo $XDG_DATA_DIRS 
   /home/bmp/.local/icons/hicolor/scalable/status:/home/bmp/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share:/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share:/usr/local/share:/usr/share:/var/lib/snapd/desktop

2. Copied files to ~/.local/icons/hicolor/scalable/status

   
   tree ~/.local/icons
   /home/bmp/.local/icons
   └── hicolor
   └── scalable
       └── status
           ├── eu.betterbird.Betterbird-default.svg
           └── eu.betterbird.Betterbird-newmail.svg

3. Relaunched Betterbird: and the icons remain the same.
![Screenshot_20240607_203730](https://github.com/flathub/eu.betterbird.Betterbird/assets/1095177/70c0e841-924e-4813-be19-35b173d3bed5)

If it matters, I am on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE.

[mfschumann]

Only the part of the path before icons/hicolor/scalable/status needs to go into $XDG_DATA_DIRS, so /home/bmp/.local in your case.

[bmp]

The icon does not change even with the updated $XDG_DATA_DIRS to,

echo $XDG_DATA_DIRS 
/home/bmp/.local:/home/bmp/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share:/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share:/usr/local/share:/usr/share:/var/lib/snapd/desktop

[mfschumann]

You could try restarting your session again after putting the icons into the correct location. Maybe the icons need to be present when the session starts?

[bmp]

I actually rebooted the machine too!

[mfschumann]

Hm, that is strange. I will try to reproduce and debug the issue on my machine, but that is going to take a while.

[bmp]

Hm, that is strange. I will try to reproduce and debug the issue on my machine, but that is going to take a while.

No hurry and thanks for trying. I was earlier using the direct download method from Betterbird and got annoyed with having to manually update and thought flatpak would be a good alternative, so this isn't a deal breaker for me.

[mfschumann]

On my fedora Silverblue machine with GNOME, I was able to customize the tray icon like this:

1. Create folder ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/status
2. Place eu.betterbird.Betterbird-default.svg and eu.betterbird.Betterbird-newmail.svg in this folder
3. Reboot

After that Betterbird showed the custom tray icon.

Note that I did not even have to add anything to $XDG_DATA_DIRS because $XDG_DATA_HOME is checked first for matching icons. On my machine the latter is unset so it defaults to $HOME/.local/share (spec).

The only obvious differences between my test and yours are

• GNOME vs. KDE
• a different directory where the icons are placed

Could you check if placing the icons in ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/status and undoing your changes to $XDG_DATA_DIRS works for you too?

Btw, thanks for posting the icons. That monochrome style matches my desktop quite nicely :-)

[bmp]

Strange, I followed your steps, and it still doesn't work for me. I on on KDE, otherwise everything else remains the same,

tree ~/.local/icons
/home/bmp/.local/icons
└── hicolor
    └── scalable
        └── status
            ├── eu.betterbird.Betterbird-default.svg
            └── eu.betterbird.Betterbird-newmail.svg

Here is the XDG variables,

echo $XDG_DATA_DIRS
/home/bmp/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share:/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share:/usr/local/share:/usr/share:/var/lib/snapd/desktop

and on my machine, $XDG_DATA_HOME is unset on my machine as well.

I have restarted the machine too.

[mfschumann]

Note it should be ~/.local/share/icons, you seem to be missing the share part.

[bmp]

Here is the revised one,

/home/bmp/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/
└── status
    ├── eu.betterbird.Betterbird-default.svg
    └── eu.betterbird.Betterbird-newmail.svg

I have done a couple of restarts with and without ~/.local/share/icons,

/home/bmp/.local/share/icons:/home/bmp/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share:/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share:/usr/local/share:/usr/share:/var/lib/snapd/desktop

But with the same effect.

[mfschumann]

I've spun up a Tumbleweed VM and tested the approach that I described in https://github.com/flathub/eu.betterbird.Betterbird/issues/158#issuecomment-2204200334, and it worked:

So it's not a KDE vs. GNOME issue, but seems specific to your setup. Can you try if the approach works under a freshly created user account?

[bmp]

I'll give this a go and report back.