None of these are relevant to me at the moment but they all show up. What does panel regard as “relevant”
i’m sure “relevant” means different things to each one, but in my expereince it rarely aligns with what i consider “relevant”, so i rarely if ever use that setting and prefer to have full control over what is shown in the system tray using either
“always shown” when i know i want viable.
“hidden” when i want easy access, but not the clutter
“disabled” when i don’t use it *
*be aware that this might also disable aspects of the actual feature, as it used to for media player.
i my opinion, the only ones that might warrant “when relevant” are notifications, updates, or nite mode… and even then, i would rather just have them on all the time or not display anything at all.
It’s about what the software that creates the tray icon thinks is relevant. “Thinks” as in: as designed by the developers.
It’s useful to have the clipboard visible when there’s something in it, but not very useful when it’s empty, so some developer decided the behavior there should be “show clipboard tray icon if it has something in it, hide it when it’s empty”. In other words, the clipboard tray icon is visible only when relevant.
For the developers, it’s called ActiveStatus. So Battery is active when it’s charging or discharging. Bluetooth is active when it’s enabled. Audio or Network is active when there’s such device. Disks or Display is active when an external device is plugged in. KDE Connect is active when it connects to the phone. I think it’s somewhat intuitive about what is regarded as “active”. “Useful” covers most cases, too. (Except Battery, whose content (power profile) can be “useful” when plugged in.) I think “useful” explains why Bluetooth is active only when enabled, but Network is active even when you disabled WI-FI.
So “Show when relevant” might be inaccurate, as the OP said, it’s not necessarily relevant (to whom?) when being active.
The Chinese translation is 有作用时显示 (show when in effect), which IMHO is more accurate. But perhaps the simple “Show when active” is the best.
agree that “when in effect” or " when active" are better terms
but what users need is some visibility into what states are considered “active” and perhaps some level of control over what the triggers actually are.
something akin to the notifications controls that lets the user dial in the level of “relevant” that suits them and that would trigger the display of the icon in the system tray.
say for the power management widget:
-
charging
-
battery low (<10%)
-
app blocking sleep
these could all be turned on/off independently to make the “relevance” more tailored to the user.