Barely visible tray icon in 7.33

[ygoe]

Using a supported version?

• [X] I have searched searched open and closed issues for duplicates.
• [X] I am using Signal-Desktop as provided by the Signal team, not a 3rd-party package.

Overall summary

The tray icon (shell notification icon in the taskbar) used to be the mid-blue shape with the white bubble outline shape. Now it's just a dark-blue shape that is barely visible on a dark taskbar.

Steps to reproduce

Nothing, just start the app (maybe enable the tray icon, not sure, it's just there)

Expected result

I found this older screenshot from 2023-11-29:

A clearly visible and recognisable tray icon

Actual result

That dark blue spot between the expander arrow and the green KeePassXC icon.

Screenshots

No response

Signal version

7.33.0

Operating system

Windows 11

Version of Signal on your phone

No response

Link to debug log

No response

[demux4555]

Confirming that I have the same issue here on Windows 10

[trevorleenc]

Just updated on Ubuntu 22.04.5 and have found the same thing.

[corobin]

i came to report the same problem. it is hardly visible

the previous icon was already pretty bad compared to the even earlier one, and now they just made it even worse

[ppoutine]

Just wait until you have an unread message. The problem gets even worse with an unread badge on top.

[arnowelzel]

Same here - on a 4K display you can see that the icon is low resolution as well:

[SilenyKrecek]

+1, give us the old icon back, or better, add an option to choose from several scalable variants, e.g., white monochrome for a system-like window look on a dark toolbar.

[janci007]

Windows 11, after updating to Signal 7.33 the icon changed to a different one with low resolution (4K display, 150% dpi scaling in display settings)

[itkfm]

7.33 on Linux still uses the low-contrast one:

[trevor-signal]

Thanks all for these reports; we'll check with our design team.

[oomek]

The new icon is just dreadful! Can't look at it without feeling an intense disgust. Please bring the old one back. Alternatively make something better without dashed lines and something that works in light and dark theme and in small sizes in the system tray.

[corobin]

@ppoutine

Just wait until you have an unread message. The problem gets even worse with an unread badge on top.

you weren't kidding. and it's way worse than it looks in the screenshot

@SilenyKrecek

+1, give us the old icon back, or better, add an option to choose from several scalable variants, e.g., white monochrome for a system-like window look on a dark toolbar.

an option would be good, not everyone would necessarily want the monochrome icon. e.g. on my system tray it would blend in with all the other monochrome icons and be harder to distinguish, i would like the chat app to be distinct

[oomek]

At first I thought my system tray has glitched. Then I've realised it's "upgraded" Signal icon 🤣

[jamiebuilds-signal]

For Windows users having trouble with the tray icon having low contrast (blue on black, or white on white):

The issue appears to be the split "custom" theme on windows:

• "Windows mode" = "Dark" and "app mode" = "Light" → Dark Tray with Blue Icon
• "Windows mode" = "Light" and "app mode" = "Dark" → Light Tray with White Icon

Looking at fixing this issue, but in the interim if you make your "Windows mode" and "app mode" both "Light" or both "Dark" it should look a bit better.

As for Linux users, the issue may be similar with us getting a mismatching theme setting from your tray. Any details you can provide will help

[oomek]

It's not about colour. The new icon is just ugly.

[arnowelzel]

I agree to @oomek - the old icon was much better and is also still used as app icon (at least in Windows). So why not just keeping the app icon as TrayIcon as well? It is easy to recognize and looks better:

And it should also not just be 16x16 pixels, since this really looks bad on HighDPI devices scaling.

[wooque]

@jamiebuilds-signal

As for Linux users, the issue may be similar with us getting a mismatching theme setting from your tray. Any details you can provide will help

Add option in Preferences -> Appearance, like "Tray Theme" beside "Theme" so we can toggle preferred theme.

[gab81]

Yeah, just to add to the feedback, it's even more confusing if you use loom (million users), they look almost the same now:

Please put the old one back, it was just perfect, no need to change. Thank you.

[AndyFx12]

It's on standard theme Linux Mint 22 (Mint-Y-Dark-Aqua) - and really hard to see. Please give us old or switchable icon back!

BTW: New App-icon (slightly darker blue) looks good.

[rsheftel]

Was this actually intentional? I assumed it was a mistake. Please revert.

[oomek]

A little word of advise for the Signal logo designer. Dashed lines are very tricky to make right at such small sizes. When you design a logo for Windows system tray make sure you design all the elements aligned to 16x16 grid, so when the system downscales it it's still crisp, or if you downscale it yourself. The default for the taskbar is 24x24, not a multiply of the base, but since it's a larger size so it's more forgiving.

[AndyFx12]

If I change my theme-settings to force dark mode, tray-icon changes to white color. It's even more ugly due to scaling (unsharp).

[ppoutine]

The issue appears to be the split "custom" theme on windows:

First I can confirm the @jamiebuilds-signal diagnosis - the tray icon is basing its colour on the “default app mode” while the taskbar colour comes from the ”default Windows mode”, so if a user has those two colours set different they'll get a mismatched tray icon colour.

Second, and separately, even with the right colour it still feels like this new tray icon is too obscured by the unread badge

[jamiebuilds-signal]

There appears to be enough issues trying to support themed tray icons on Windows and certain distributions of Linux that we've decided to replace the icon with a new version that should work better regardless of the selected theme. We should have a new version of the app out sometime early next week

[bk138]

There appears to be enough issues trying to support themed tray icons on Windows and certain distributions of Linux that we've decided to replace the icon with a new version that should work better regardless of the selected theme. We should have a new version of the app out sometime early next week

Just my 2 c: I think the old icon worked just well, at least on Linux GNOME and MacOS 😉.

[AndyFx12]

Just my 2 c: I think the old icon worked just well, at least on Linux GNOME and MacOS 😉.

... and Windows 10, 11 and Linux Mint ;-)

[Warwolt]

Yeah, I also would very much appreciate just going back to the old icon. I'm not at all a fan of the dark blue color

[DimitriDR]

I just hate the new blue shade. Just look how It ruined my Dock harmony:

Like why? Same on my iPhone. Just give us the choice, many apps offer this (Reddit, Carrot to just name a few).

[FiSHYsolutions]

+1 using xubuntu 22.04 LTS

bash$ grep png $(find /snap/signal-desktop/current/ -name "*.desktop")
Icon=${SNAP}/meta/gui/signal-desktop.png

is this png used somewhere or does it just waste diskspace?

[Fuchs]

Please just give us an option for it to be monochrome and, also on Linux, if it's supposed to be dark (for light themes) or bright (for dark themes). If your design team disagrees, please just give us and icon themes the option to override it by loading a specific file if present. Thanks.

[bouras]

another vote for bringing back the old icon

[zakutin]

Linux/GNOME, it looks odd...

[Septicity]

"Symbolic icons" as a whole were designed for this exact purpose. Completely hard-coded solid-color icons on a system tray have consistently been criticized and suggested against; mostly for specifically white or black icons, but it applies to this as well. At the very least, is there a particular icon name it expects from the icon theme to change this ourselves (e.g. "signal-applet.png" or "signal-applet.svg")?

[ygoe]

Now at night with my blue light filter active, that dark blue blob is almost black, and hardly visible at all on the very dark taskbar. But I guess this is mostly a bug related to the wrong theme icon being selected.

Anyway, what I mean to say is that new dark blue is next to black with a blue light filter. It's just a bad signal colour (no pun intended) to use in a GUI.

[itsjustarumour]

Just my $0.02. The old tray icon worked perfectly well for me on Windows 10, Windows 11, Linux with GNOME desktop, and Linux with KDE desktop. Now on Windows 10 it is too dark to see, on WIndows 11 it looks like a bacterium(!), and on Linux it looks awful.

[jamiebuilds-signal]

Signal Desktop v7.34.0-beta.3 includes an updated tray icon design that is no longer separately themed in light and dark mode and is more pixel-aligned at smaller sizes.

You can participate in the beta here: https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007318471-Signal-Beta

I'm going to close this issue now as the beta should be promoted to production soon.

[ygoe]

The new icon is visible in general, but the blue colour is still effectively non-existent in it on the dark taskbar. I guess it's also invisible on a light taskbar due to the high contrast then. So, that blue is a really bad colour. Please change it to something visible/accessible.

[Septicity]

The new icon is visible in general, but the blue colour is still effectively non-existent in it on the dark taskbar. I guess it's also invisible on a light taskbar due to the high contrast then. So, that blue is a really bad colour. Please change it to something visible/accessible.

The Signal logo itself is a bit more legible, but this particular blue on it has too little contrast on a dark taskbar. I can't imagine that it would have too much contrast on a lighter taskbar, but regardless, this is barely an upgrade.

[oomek]

Thanks for fixing the icon glyph, it's much better now. I still don't like the new colour though. It blends with grey background luminance-wise

[corobin]

Thanks for responding to feedback. Unfortunately, even the new icon, while an improvement, is still worse than the older icon.

A couple of outstanding issues:

1. The white lines look - excuse the language - like trash on this version. especially on a high dpi display. you can sort of see it on @Septicity's screenshot. It looks even more jagged and unclear irl.

here's another screenshot:

2. that blue is still almost invisible on a dark background. it's also got more of a purple-ish hue now (more evident on the android icon actually) which looks worse than the more blue icon before. it's just a bad shade of blue in general.

[trevorleenc]

I concur...the new icon is in no way better aesthetically, though it is slightly easier to see because of the white fill. Please go back to the old icon. Ubuntu 22.04 / KDE 5.27.11

[wooque]

The new icon (7.34.0) is a improvement over 7.33.0, but still massive downgrade over 7.32.0 Comparison of 7.32.0 vs 7.34.0:

[AndyFx12]

There are 2 issues with new tray-icon:

• discussed color (to dark blue)
• scaling (there is a 32px-version at github - but while setting to 32px-size on cinnamon, 16px icon will be upscaled instead)

Please give us old icon back!

[arnowelzel]

Scaling issues also apply to Windows 11. At 200% scaling the icon is still only 16x16 and not 32x32 as expected.

[synthfusion]

Linux/GNOME, it looks odd...

It doesn't only looks odd in Linux/GNOME. In Android it's so distracting and horrendous I can't even think of any reasons to change what used to be a beautiful icone oneday. Seriously, who's running Signal design team?

[itsjustarumour]

The new icon still isn't working - it's too dark on every OS and Desktop I've seen it on, and it doesn't look like/represent either Signal, or a speech bubble (representing "talking" or "communication").

Please just bring the old icon back!