Changing icons in system tray lxpanel

[longtom]

Hi,

I have an lxpanel running with a black theme.  When I start up Opera it uses an icon in the system tray with a light grey background - which looks plain ugly.

I did some research but couldn't come up with a winner.

Is it possible to change the appearance of an icon in the system tray and if yes, how?

[Archie]

heya longtom,

Although I use KDE, it should be just the same. First thing you need to do is locate opera.desktop

Code: [Select]

$ locate opera.desktop
It should be on a location similar to /usr/share/applications/

Edit the file as root and go to the section where in indicates Icon= and change the entry to the absolute path of the icon you want to use. For example,

Code: [Select]

Icon=/home/longtom/cons/dark-opera.png
Save the file and you should be good to go

[longtom]

Hi Archie,

thanks buddy.  DIdn't work so.  While it changes the icon in the opera.desktop file and probably anywhere else, it didn't in the system tray.  I get the feeling the system tray gets it's icons somewhere else.  The price question is - where.  Since I use Opera also as my mail client the icon changes to an Opers icon with a little envelope - with the same gray background.  I, so far, couldn't locate that icon - which I reckon is fairly unique.

Any other thoughts will be welcome.

[daniel]

The icon should be sin in opera folder, /usr/share/opera/*
I don't use here opera, and can't really help, sorry....

[longtom]

The icon should be sin in opera folder, /usr/share/opera/*
I don't use here opera, and can't really help, sorry....

Thanks Leiche, been there.  No icons I am afraid.  Lots of icons in ~/.opera/icons - but not the offensive ones.

[cstrike77]

Hi,

I have an lxpanel running with a black theme.  When I start up Opera it uses an icon in the system tray with a light grey background - which looks plain ugly.

I did some research but couldn't come up with a winner.

Is it possible to change the appearance of an icon in the system tray and if yes, how?

Right click on an ICON in sys tray, select Application launch bar settings, first entry, on the right click internt > then select opera and add, make sure you delete the one on the left panel...

But I wish this would work for synaptic, after changing the icon u need to launch it by gksu synaptic in run...

jan

[longtom]

Thanks for stooping by cstrike77.

However - the system tray is not an Application Launch Bar and right clicking on the Opera icon (or any other icon in the system tray) only produces credentials relaying to this particular program.   There certainly is no option to change an icon.  In any Application Launch Bar the icon used is the one from opera.desktop, as one would like to expect.  The system tray, however, appears tp follow different routes as far as icon allocation is concerned.

Just to clarify:  The system tray (for me) is the part of the panel where icons show of some programs which are active in some or other way.  The network icon would be one of them, dropbox icon another one - and the offensive Opera icon.

[cstrike77]

Thanks for stooping by cstrike77.

However - the system tray is not an Application Launch Bar and right clicking on the Opera icon (or any other icon in the system tray) only produces credentials relaying to this particular program.   There certainly is no option to change an icon.  In any Application Launch Bar the icon used is the one from opera.desktop, as one would like to expect.  The system tray, however, appears tp follow different routes as far as icon allocation is concerned.

Just to clarify:  The system tray (for me) is the part of the panel where icons show of some programs which are active in some or other way.  The network icon would be one of them, dropbox icon another one - and the offensive Opera icon.

Sorry, my bad.. Thought u were talking abt the quick launch icons.. I get the red one on the bottom right of the screen by the clock when running opera.. Plus it's in a white box (UGH!). That started with the last update of opera.

Later,

jan

[byourg]

Try 'locate opera' in a terminal, it will bring up anywhere there is something related to opera.

[longtom]

Try 'locate opera' in a terminal, it will bring up anywhere there is something related to opera.

Yes - that's a good idea.  I did that before and a lot of stuff cam up, but not those 2 icons I am talking about.  However, looking how the icons in ~/.opera/icons are named I am not too surprised these icons are not named anything with "opera". 

[Archie]

There are a few places where icons are stored. If they are as ugly as you say, chances are they're probably at /usr/share/pixmaps/

[seppalta]

If you change the icon in the desktop file, that should change the icon in the main menu.  To get the taskbar icon to change, replace the current opera from the taskbar with the one displaying the new icon.  You can use any small image, say 48x48, as an icon, just move it to /usr/share/icons and pick it.  Lxmed is nice for editing icons, menu items and .desktop files.  See http://douwil7.100webspace.net/linux/Tuning.html for more information.

[longtom]

If you change the icon in the desktop file, that should change the icon in the main menu.  To get the taskbar icon to change, replace the current opera from the taskbar with the one displaying the new icon.  You can use any small image, say 48x48, as an icon, just move it to /usr/share/icons and pick it.  Lxmed is nice for editing icons, menu items and .desktop files.  See http://douwil7.100webspace.net/linux/Tuning.html for more information.

Welcome with us seppalta.  Thx for your post - but I am not talking taskbar icons but systray icons, as I had to find out, they are not the same.

Archie, I had a look in pixmaps - no luck.  It's not a train smash - not even close ... but it's just bugging me . 

[princethrash]

longtom,

When you try to customize icons manually by copying over them, it can be necessary to run:

gtk-update-icon-cache

So I think it's possible you changed the right ones with your efforts, you just had to update the cache.

A lot of people will refer you to the .desktop file, but as far as I know this only effects the appearance of the program on the Main Menu, but NOT in your window manager decoration at the top left, NOT in the task tray, and NOT in the system tray.

To modify these, I downloaded a fairly complete icon theme from gnome-look.org.  It came with icons for opera.

Unzip it, and look in /nameoftheme/apps/

Under /apps there are different sizes of icon by directory (16, 22, 24,  32, 48, scalable).  Under each of these, opera has three icons:

opera.png
opera-widget-manager.png
opera-browser.png

So then you just:

1. Change all of these to the icon you want (I replaced mine with icons that had a 3x3 resolution so they don't need to match).

2. Re-zip/tar the theme directory, then install it with LXappearance,

3. Go back into lxappearance and select your icon theme -- this last step is easily missed because lxappearance assumes you just want to install it, but not use it, and that's so damn weird.   

Personally, I keep the icon theme I downloaded, so I can change it and update it and reinstall it as I go.

I know this is a round-about way, but it works.
Us black background people have to stick together, damnit.

[Archie]

Heya princethrash,

Your procedure makes very good sense and I will try it out. Thanks.

And welcome to the community.

Peace and much respect,
Archie

PS. Welcome to you too, seppalta. Didn't see you up there.