Sync status icons not shown in Linux distributions

[jancborchardt]

(This is with Ubuntu 20.04 and GNOME 3.36.3, all current stable and freshly installed.)

Whether installing the Nextcloud desktop client 2.7.0 via AppImage or Ubuntu PPA, I don’t get file manager icons unless the nextcloud-client-nautilus package is installed, same as with the PPA (used the beta PPA).

Of course needing to install another package is not so nice, so it would be cool to do that automatically or improve the situation a bit. cc @ivaradi

• For the Ubuntu PPA: Can we just install the nextcloud-client-nautilus package? @er-vin noted that there’s of course Kubuntu and other distributions which can use the PPA but might not use Nautilus – but a) we could just do this as a first step and b) I assume this can be checked somehow and a different fitting package be selected (or just skipped)?
• For the AppImage: It apparently can’t do this according to @rullzer as it needs to integrate with the system and thus can’t install that package. @DominiqueFuchs suggested a great solution for a notice which could just be a dismissable box in the activity list:

  As the AppImage already assures the platform by it‘s nature, one could relatively simple do a check for the package and provide a decent notice on first launch or similar. Just to prevent users who actually want that functionality assumings it‘s simply broken.

• I didn’t test the Debian package or the Snap, does anyone know about that?

Since the AppImage is our default recommendation for installing on Linux, it would be nice to make this even better and just work – so if someone has insight or an idea, that would be cool. :)

[marbx]

Regarding an "official" solution to a system tray under Debian+GNOME, I found:

• A discussion about integrating the Appindicator extension into gnome
  • Which includes a link to the (tiny) "top-icons" extension on an unmerged Gnome branch which only has a "policy issue". Could "top-icons" be a solution?

Regarding "official" file manager icons:

• Gnome 3.26 included a library for cloud providers
  • Why doesn't NextCloud use it?

Until icons are missing, could the NextCloud desktop app use QSystemTrayIcon::isSystemTrayAvailable() to alert the user that the top icon (and file manager icons) are missing and how to work around?

As users must initially open the app to connect to their cloud, they would be notified of the workarounds. Otherwise, a lot users will be left frustrated, as I was myself, and many will simply assume the app does not work.

[RokeJulianLockhart]

git automatically adds sycnhronization-iconography to dolphin when installed via Fedora.