Child Item

Gnome unresponsive icon tray was only "fixed" for Ubuntu

Operating System
Verified on Debian 13, Fedora 43, Ubuntu 24.04/25.10
Dropbox App Version (if using the app)
v241.4.4795

Question or Issue

We all know this issue which affects Gnome and the Appindicator of Dropbox, there are multiple discussions about it.

Dropbox Client for Linux on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS- icon not clickable. | The Dropbox Community

Ubuntu 23.10 - No menu | The Dropbox Community

I see no menu after clicking on the Dropbox tray icon on Fedora 43. | The Dropbox Community

https://github.com/ubuntu/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator/issues/529

https://youtu.be/6a4cvtZsRWo

This issue has also been generally solved by reloading the shell/appindicator extension, so with either locking and unlocking session or with

/usr/bin/gnome-extensions disable ubuntu-appindicators@ubuntu.com

/usr/bin/gnome-extensions enable ubuntu-appindicators@ubuntu.com

Now this works so well that this is actually how the issue was solved on Ubuntu (LTS/interim), YES dropbox on Ubuntu (the repository differs from Debian) is actually reloading the appindicator extension automatically, this is what happens if you remove the extension and start dropbox.

$ dropbox start result after removing appindicator on Ubuntu

Although I think it's pretty obvious that it's an inelegant workaround rather than a solution, it is an effective one, but I don't understand why it is only applied to Ubuntu, despite being extremely easy to manage. In fact, there are only two extensions on Gnome

appindicatorsupport@rgcjonas.gmail.com
ubuntu-appindicators@ubuntu.com

Also Debian actually uses the same identical extension

https://packages.debian.org/trixie/gnome-shell-extension-appindicator

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Comments

Jay

Hi @yuretto, thanks for messaging the Community!

Just for clarification, the method used to resolve the behavior doesn't work for other distros, is that correct?

This will help me to assist further!

yuretto

Hi @Jay, thank you for your reply.

The method itself will work on any distribution with Gnome, also bear in mind that
appindicatorsupport@rgcjonas.gmail.com and ubuntu-appindicators@ubuntu.com are the same extension under different names.

The reason it doesn't work on other distros is that it was not implemented in their repository, but only in the Ubuntu one, which differs from Debian https://linux.dropbox.com/

The executable that is disabling and enabling the extension is ~/.dropbox-dist/dropbox-lnx.x86_64-version/dropbox.