OK so what is it with the Top Bar on the right? Firstly it seems impossible to choose what is allowed there or not. Furthermore the size seems to expand when it wants, and some apps display there and some do not.
So how to control them? Gnome Extensions! I hear ya!
Except they do not completely work. Some of them I cannot quite work out if I need them?
AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support (by [3v1n0]) seems to work a bit, but not enough and resets.
TopIconsFix (by [aleskva]) also seems to display a few apps that one needs but not all. Is it needed?
Lilypad Top Bar Manager (by [shendrew]) also works a bit, but then when you try to delete the ones you don’t want then they re-appear.
Top Bar Organizer (by June) works the best, but the forget does not always work, though it seems good for removing legacy entries, which seem unavailable to edit elsewhere.
Did I forget anything? Has anyone else had these issues? Is it a Wayland/Xorg issue? Why is this hard?
If I understand your text right, you want to have an arbitrary list of app icons in the top bar, similar to the dash in the overview?
If that’s the case:
GNOME in itself does not show any app icons in the top bar at all.
And pretty much all extensions you mentioned are providing support for tray icons, an old concept for apps running in the background.
These tray icons are dynamic and depend on which apps are running in the background and want to display an icon. So there’s bound to be changes to them depending on the apps running or not.
If you want to display a list of app icons of your choosing, something like Dash in Panel might be the better choice.
I’m sorry that I was not clear. To the right of the top bar there are a list of apps in the “tray” which are loaded when I login, so for example I have an extension which creates a clipboard which remains for me to use even after a login/out and poweron/off.
I feel sure that we all have a number of these Gnome Extensions which are persistently there. I have a “Show Desktop” and a Tiling Extension called “gtile” as well as another called “arrange windows” my music player is also there and my VPN. These are all automatically there because I use them during my session. There is also a bluetooth connect there and a wallpaper program as well as a language change and of course the corner also has the settings section where I can turn on/off the WIFI etc
As I said there are a number of extensions for controlling this area, (and the left/centre as well) but they do not all work well, so I am asking if anyone has any other ways - maybe dconf editor or a github program to take greater control?
With the Lily pad extension, there seems to be a gap in the bar where some programs such as bluetooth, dnfdragon and variety push themselves into. If I move something within Lilypad then it suddenly remembers that it should be following that order and reverts to it, but automatically it does not.
I mean the Dash in Panel is at the bottom of my screen and has the programs I need to launch frequently. I’m talking about what you call the tray icons at the top right, where I can change say the server on my vpn with a click or where I can get my clipboard list.
I would like to be able to fix the apps that are there or not. They seem to jump around that’s all. I use Appindicator of TopIconsFix as well as Lilypad, but I cannot get them to stay where they are and they change order and re-appear when I delete them within Lilypad
Is there some way to deal with these Tray Icons which is better. Surely there are some programs that are running which require the occasional contacct?
So when the icons such as bluetooth slot into the space that Gnome provides on the Tray, then you are saying that Bluetooth decides where it is placed?
Why is the space and order that the icons are organised not down to Gnome? And why are the existing order Gnome Extensions not able to maintain an order? The fact that Lilypad suddenly refreshes the order correctly when I go into its settings implies that there is a problem with the gnome tray icons refresh, not a problem with bluetooth not programming the refresh correctly.
So the tray icons and their usage is only defined by the gnome extensions which have nothing to do with gnome? Interesting idea. Why are gnome extensions nothing to do with gnome? One would think that gnome has specifically programmed itself to have parameters within which these extensions can work, and one of those parameters would be the reaction of the tray icons and how gnome reacts to them.
So how can a gnome extension program the tray icons to for example to have a basic “new apps at the beginning” rather than the existing ability of these apps to just appear in the middle of existing apps in the tray? And why are the existing extensions listed unable to apply a fixed order if it is so open as you describe?