In version 1.3.0 of xfce4-power-manager the tray icon functionality has been removed in favour of the xfce4-battery-plugin. xfce4-battery-plugin offers some really nice features like showing the charge percentage or remaining time directly in the panel. There are, however, some substantial features which are not implemented in the battery plugin: 1. Useful entries in the context menu like switching to presentation mode. 2. Using an icon from the GTK theme rather than an ugly Tango-like icon. 3. Using different icons to indicate the charge percentage. Currently only two (ugly - see 2.) icons are used to indicate whether external current is present or not. 4. The battery status is updated after a delay of about 5 seconds (i.e. if I plug in AC power, the icon or the bar colour is updated after about 5 seconds). The bottom line is that you have a choice between an ugly icon without charge percentage indication or a simple bar (or both) both of which have a delayed status update as compared to an awesome icon fitting into the remaining desktop, indicating charge percentage and updating in the very second that battery state changes. If the battery plugin is going to get the missing features mentioned above, then the tray icon of the power manager might become obsolete. But please reintroduce the tray icon for the time being!
Could it be that you tested the wrong battery plugin? If you have installed the battery plugin before power manager 1.3.0, you will have two: One external and the one included with power manager.
I can only see one plugin in the list, in German it is called "Batterieüberwachung", no second "internal" one. I'm using Manjaro and here is the package for the power manager: http://mirror3.layerjet.com/manjaro/stable/extra/x86_64/xfce4-power-manager-1.3.0.79.ge5ee773-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
I ask this because your number 1. is actually invalid. There is a context menu entry "presentation mode". Don't have my laptop here at the moment, so I can't tell how the plugin is named exactly (look it up in transifex). But "Batterieüberwachung" seems to be the old one, and the new one should be availabel in 1.3.0.
> 1. Useful entries in the context menu like switching to presentation mode. That's invalid, it's there in the plugin. > 2. Using an icon from the GTK theme rather than an ugly Tango-like icon. It uses the adwaita icon theme (formerly known as the gnome icon theme), it used an old version of it before and was ported to the icons of gnome3. > 3. Using different icons to indicate the charge percentage. Currently only two (ugly - see 2.) icons are used to indicate whether external current is present or not. It still uses an icon. Actually there is no optional label yet, but it will be introduced. > 4. The battery status is updated after a delay of about 5 seconds (i.e. if I plug in AC power, the icon or the bar colour is updated after about 5 seconds). Can't confirm that at all. The plugin is at least as responsive as the trayicon. All in all, not sure what to make of this bugreport.
Guys, I think, there is a misunderstanding here. The four points mentioned by me are not occurring in the applet shipped together with xfce4-power-manager, but with another applet, xfce4-battery-plugin. The actual bug is then, that the applet shipped with xfce4-power-manager doesn't appear in the applet list (or I cannot find it there) - that's why I thought that it has been completely removed and asked to return it. On Transifex I found string #193 which looks like the applet name: Battery indicator plugin -- Akkuanzeigeerweiterung However it is not present in my applet list. Maybe xfce4-power-manager can be compiled without the additional battery indicator plugin and it has been compiled so by the package maintainers of the corresponding Manjaro package? The version of xfce4-power-manager shipped in Manjaro is currently 1.3.0.79.ge5ee773 and the package is available here: http://mirror3.layerjet.com/manjaro/stable/extra/x86_64/xfce4-power-manager-1.3.0.79.ge5ee773-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
That's what I meant. However, there is an error in the build system in up-to-date git which you won't notice when doing a make distcheck; While the plugins get built and included in the distribution package, they do not get built in the package built using that source package, even though configure says it should: config.status: executing po/stamp-it commands prefix: /usr xdg autostart: /etc/xdg/autostart POLKIT: yes DPMS: yes Network manager: no Build panel plugins: yes Xfce plugins: yes Backend: linux Debug: minimum Configuration finished, type make to compile If your package has been built recently (not the version tagged as 1.3.0), then probably that's why you won't have the two plugins available.
I think I have fixed both issues in my private branch: http://git.xfce.org/users/hjudt/xfce4-power-manager/ I've only tested the xfce, not the lxde plugins, but theoretically they should both work now.
Harald, thanks for the quick fix! I tested it on my Manjaro machine and the fix works, i.e. I have now a second battery related panel applet in the list which looks much more similar to what power manager was providing. I hope that this will be merged to master and included in a point release soon!
Pushed Harald's patches to master (same day too!): http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/commit/?id=7dc0da52ea5dd2cee44404aa7390acdcb1432f6f http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/commit/?id=ecf25ab606f5c5cd9da65e8a3511f06d955dea6a Thanks Harald, we need to get you commit rights :) Marking bug resolved.
Even though this may not be "desired" by xfce... the power manager would work great with other window managers (fluxbox for me). However now that the tray option has been removed in favor of an applet, do I now need to install xfce4-panel to make use of the power manager abilities that were quickly accessible in the past? I read of how there is still an option for "presentation mode" in the applet (as there is no tray option) but that is pretty useless without the panel :/
(In reply to antiX-Dave from comment #10) > Even though this may not be "desired" by xfce... the power manager would > work great with other window managers (fluxbox for me). However now that the > tray option has been removed in favor of an applet, do I now need to install > xfce4-panel to make use of the power manager abilities that were quickly > accessible in the past? I read of how there is still an option for > "presentation mode" in the applet (as there is no tray option) but that is > pretty useless without the panel :/ As for the presentation mode (and perhaps other settings): If you have xfconf installed (I'm not sure you can install xfce4-power-manager without it), you can activate and deactivate the presentation mode via a script, and hook that onto a keybinding.
Please bring it back !! :////
Since yesterday Xubuntu 14.10 has been released, I assume that you are a Xubuntu user. Citing xubuntu.org: New Xfce Power Manager plugin is added to the panel Note: Upgraders from Trusty will not see the new xfce4-power-manager panel plugin by default, but instead stick to indicator-power. This can easily be resolved by uninstalling indicator-power and adding the “Power Manager Plugin” to the panel.