Need to see if your shared folder is taking up space on your dropbox 👨‍💻? Find out how to check here.

Forum Discussion

run_the_race's avatar
run_the_race
Helpful | Level 5
8 months ago

Dropbox says my environment doesn't support tray icon, by it does

In the following image you can see the dropbox system tray icon top right, with the error message below it. I am using the `i3wm` on Ubuntu with `i3status` to show the icons. To me this is a bug in t...
desktop
Linux
Neal's avatar
Neal
Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
7 months ago

Hi Andsmi​,

I've checked with the team and they said that Dropbox uses DBus to find the app indicator services, so you'll have to make sure that the org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher service is running. You can do that by running the following command in your terminal:

dbus-send --session \ --type=method_call \ --print-reply \ --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus \ /org/freedesktop/DBus \ org.freedesktop.DBus.ListNames

You should get a list of service names returned, and you should find org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher in that list.Assuming you see that, you can then query the status of the service using the same DBus message that the Dropbox app uses with the following command:

dbus-send --session \ --type=method_call \ --print-reply \ --dest=org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher \ /StatusNotifierWatcher \ org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Get \ string:org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher \ string:IsStatusNotifierHostRegistered

If Gnome is properly using the service you should see something like this:

method return time=1748612867.079169 sender=:1.25 -> destination=:1.239 serial=4372 reply_serial=2 variant boolean true

That boolean true is the important part that tells you the service is running and a host is registered.If the appindicator shell extension is properly registering a host and the DBus service is exposed then you should not see that error message.Gnome is currently on version 48, and the appindicator shell extension is currently at version 60, so updating those items may help resolve the issue.

Andsmi's avatar
Andsmi
Helpful | Level 5
7 months ago

Thanks for the insight into this. Neal Mc.

This is the output from your commands, that show that the service is indeed running.

~$ dbus-send --session --type=method_call --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus /org/freedesktop/DBus org.freedesktop.DBus.ListNames | grep StatusNotifierWatcher
      string "org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher"
~$ dbus-send --session --type=method_call --print-reply --dest=org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher /StatusNotifierWatcher org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Get string:org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher string:IsStatusNotifierHostRegistered
method return time=1748671496.836229 sender=:1.43 -> destination=:1.5702 serial=221064 reply_serial=2
   variant       boolean true
~$

That said, the Dropbox icon is showing now, so maybe there's a bug in how Dropbox detects it in some instances.

I'll let you know if the message shows again.

Thanks for your help.

About Apps and Installations

Have a question about a Dropbox app or installation? Reach out to the Dropbox Community and get solutions, help, and advice from members.

The Dropbox Community team is active from Monday to Friday. We try to respond to you as soon as we can, usually within 2 hours.

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X, Facebook or Instagram.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!