Please consider adding a white list mode to the system tray (and a true black list)

Brainstorm
1

First, let me say KDE is amazing. This is only a wish of a single user, but maybe others here will think this is a useful feature too:

I currently have the system tray disabled, even though that makes things difficult. The reason is that there doesn’t seem to be a white list mode, nor a true black list mode. Use case for a white list: avoiding the need for babysitting new apps showing up in the tray needing manual hiding and eating screen space. (Extra small screens.) Use case for black list: Wanting to see everything going on by default but being able to hide some items you truly don’t ever need. (Extra large screens.)

You would think a black list works, but it doesn’t seem to, since “Entries” > “Always show all entries” will gray out some entries to no longer let me single them out for disabling afterward. This seems to be by design, meaning it’s not actually possible to freely choose what not to show.

I’m proposing a design like this: At the bottom, a Default Visibility: 1. Default to everything visible, or 2. Default to everything hidden, or 3, Default to automatic (current behavior). And then for each entry, a Per-Item Visibility: with choices A. Use default visibility, or B. Always hide/disabled, or C. Always show.

Choosing “Default to automatic” and leaving each entry as “Use default visibility” would be the current default behavior, equivalent of “Always show all entries” off.

Choosing “Default to everything visible” would be the equivalent of “Always show all entries” on, except now as a unrestricted black list where it would still be possible to override every item to “Always hide” and not a restricted partial black list that it seems to be now where that is not available for all items.

Choosing “Default to everything hidden” would be the unrestricted whitelist, where it’s still possible to set any select item to “Always show”.

Maybe somebody has a better idea. In summary, I wish the system tray could be made more predictable while remaining fully configurable, which doesn’t seem to be possible right now.

1 Like
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i would be happy to just be able to drag and sort the icons…

but my entries are either set to disabled or always shown since hiding them doesn’t really give me what i want and having them pop in an out a their choosing is conflicting with my need to have order.

hiding them only seems to create a new system tray entry “<” that acts like a drawer so when you open it, there are all the entries you have marked hidden … “hidden” in plain sight, i guess.

setting them to show when appropriate just leaves it up to the system to decide if it’s in the drawer or out.

so if you truly don’t ever want to see something then you need to disable it, but keep in mind that might affect how things work… like disabling the media control system tray icon actually disabled your physical media controls, like for real… i understand that’s getting fixed, but i’m still on plasam5