Ubuntu 23.10 - No menu

No, I agree, and I've already reported the issue to the extension maintainers.

ubuntu/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator #529: Dropbox icon won't accept clicks until appindicator extension is restarted

No response yet.

One thing that might help, notredruide, is to make sure dropbox  is started before the extension. That's how I have it set up on my system, and as a result I don't have to restart the extension every boot, only after I restart dropbox manually.

On my system I've done that by setting up a systemd service to start the daemon, in place of $HOME/.config/autostart/dropbox.desktop. That's a bit technical, but I'll provide the service file definition for anyone interested.

But if you don't want to go that route, by default $HOME/.config/autostart/dropbox.desktop contains an autostart delay:

X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=10

 Deleting that line might help it start up before the extension, in which case you wouldn't need to restart anything.

For anyone who wants to have their systemd user session manage the daemon, instead of relying on autostart, you can delete the autostart file and create a dropbox.service file instead. My service definition, with dropbox installed into /usr/bin/ from the Dropbox RPM repository, is:

[Unit]
Description=Dropbox Network Storage Daemon
After=network-online.target graphical-session.target gnome-shell.service

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=%h/.dropbox/dropbox.pid
ExecStart=/usr/bin/dropbox start -i
ExecStop=/usr/bin/dropbox stop
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

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FeRDNYC wrote:

For anyone who wants to have their systemd user session manage the daemon, instead of relying on autostart, you can delete the autostart file and create a dropbox.service file instead.

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Actually, instead of just deleting the autostart file, you should switch off "Start Dropbox on system startup" in the Dropbox preferences. That'll delete the autostart file for you, and won't re-create it later when it notices it's missing.

Thank you FeRDNYC, you have gone to a lot of trouble! Unfortunately I'm not well enough versed in under-the-hood Linux to adopt that method. I can live with restarting the extension for now. But I may try commenting out that Autostart-Delay line -- that's within my (limited) competence.

It does appear that one needs to have the AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support gnome extension installed for the Dropbox menu to work.

However the menu no longer works after Powering Off or doing a Restart. However other forums state that the menu is restored after locking the screen by pressing "Windows+L" or "Super+L" and then unlocking the screen again. This has worked for me.

see 2304_dropbox_icon_is_not_clickable & nautilus-dropbox/+bug/2015620

It seems that Dropbox does not play well with some gnome extensions such as Dash to Panel. However the aforementioned Lock screen trick works with Dash to Panel enabled.

Ref: https://github.com/ubuntu/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator/issues/346

I attempted to delay the autostart of Dropbox, but unfortunately that did not work for me. Some other options for delaying autostart may be found here delay-startup-application-ubuntu 

Oh, one thing there — you wouldn't want to delay the autostart of dropbox, you'd actually want to ACCELERATE it. Delaying it is going in the wrong direction.

If the Dropbox daemon starts before the "AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support" extension is initialized, then there are no issues with its menu; effectively, the extension's initial startup is equivalent to restarting it after the daemon.

The menu problem only comes up when the extension is started FIRST. (As it normally will be, when Dropbox is being started by $HOME/.config/autostart/dropbox.desktop, since the Shell and its extensions get initialized well before anything starts processing autostart files.)