Please implement proper GNOME support

Feature requests
#1

GNOME users from recent versions of many different Linux distributions have been having a hard time making insync work as expected: installation is not straightforward, and we have to resort to non-intuitive additional steps (install additional packages, remove other ones). A search for “tray icon” on the forums gives an idea of how bad things are right now. This is far from ideal, and doesn’t make justice to the quality of insync itself. Granted, a great deal of this is due to the fact that GNOME decided to drop support for tray icons a couple of versions ago. Still, IMHO insync could – and should – do better.

So, on behalf of all GNOME users that already (or plan to) use insync, I ask you to take some time to implement proper GNOME support, and stop depending on 3rd party apps or extensions. I don’t have concrete numbers to back my argument, but GNOME is already the default desktop on Fedora, and with Ubuntu having recently officially embraced it as well, I guess it is safe to say that a lot of insync Linux users will be using GNOME. I happen to use Fedora at home and Ubuntu at work, and struggled with both.

Maybe it’s just a matter of implementing its own GNOME extension. Maybe it will require a GTK version of the GUI. Maybe both. I am not sure. But, until this happens, we will have a great and useful piece of software hindered by many small annoyances, providing users a subpar experience.

Insync status icon and Gnome 3.26
#2

Hi @Costa! The 1.5 update we’re working on will make Insync behave more like a desktop/window app rather than a “tray icon app” (i.e. via GNOME extensions). I believe this will address the frustrations you pointed out about installation and day to day use on GNOME.

Tagging our Linux dev @Kurt_Ko in case I missed anything. cc @Gregory

Thanks for the feedback :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#3

Thks for the heads up, @gio , looks like excellent news, glad to know you are paying attention to it. I’d love to hear more about it – maybe a blog post, perhaps? I believe it would still be nice to have some way to interact with it through a GNOME extension; despite the current problems, it is convenient to be able to access it through the top bar, regardless of which desktop I am.

Any ETA for v1.5?

#4

While seconding your call for help, probably fair to point out that the underlying problem is due to a very arbitrary decision by Gnome. Gnome 3 officially supports all of GTK2 except, apparently the System Tray Icon.
And, one step further, Gnome based Ubuntu and flavours seem to work fine because Ubuntu decided to leave in its AppIndicator libraries (from Unity days) and its a good substitute.
Davo

#5

Hi @David_Bannon, thks for jumping in. Sure, 100% agreed regarding GNOME’s fault on this (I even mentioned this on my original post). And, in my personal experience, things are not so smooth on Ubuntu – at least not on 18.04 LTS (see reported issue here).

#6

We understand the frustration with Gnome, @Costa and @David_Bannon. As what @gio said, we’re working on a 1.5 update that we believe will fix Gnome issues. There’s no final release date yet but it’s coming soon! We’ll definitely update you. :slight_smile:

#7

Nice @Gregory! Looking forward to it! :wink:

1 Like
#8

@gio and @Gregory , since you are working on a new version, please make sure to (in no particular order):

  1. implement CLI switches according to Linux standards (eg. get_status >> status), and also, simplify them as much as you can (or, at least, provide shorter versions – accept_all_new_shares takes forever to write… :persevere:)
  2. improve help messages for some commands. For example, the help for “status” should also describe each possible status, and what it means.
  3. bump package versions properly. Fedora packages still refer to Fedora 25… :unamused: This only needs to be done once a new version is released (every 6 months). It shouldn’t be that hard :wink:
2 Likes
#9

Apologies for the late reply, @Costa! (My girlfriend just gave birth)

The feedback, as always, is much appreciated and we’ll be sure to relay the info to our team! :slight_smile: If you have any more ideas, just let me know!

#10

Congratulations @Gregory ! :smile::clap::clap::clap: I can’t think of a more noble reason to be late for anything. Enjoy your newly acquired fatherhood, it is going to be an awesome ride… :wink:

EDIT: congratulated the wrong person :upside_down_face:

#11

Thank you so much @Costa!! :slight_smile: I appreciate the kind words! :heart:

#12

Greetings all, long time Insync customer but newer adopter of pop_os and came across this post after struggling to get the top system tray icon working within pop_os.

I ended up using KStatusNotifierItem/AppIndicator Support from GnomeTweaks/Extensions which works but it’s not in line with the other top bar icons and look out of place.

I know officially Insync states they do not support pop_os (I installed Unbuntu 19.10 64bit) but with System76 now starting to design both their own hardware and operating system maybe the devs at Insync will reconsider as they gain more popularity? Also considering the popularity of Ubuntu (and getting rid of Unity) seems like that might be a big Linux customer base?

1 Like
#13

Hi @nbm13,

Again, thank you so so much for your feedback! :slight_smile: I have escalated this to our developers so we can research on officially supporting PopOS in the near future :slight_smile:

1 Like