Dropbox will require App Indicator support on Linux

This doesn&#x27;t seem like a big deal. They use what appears to be a widely supported library for their tray icon, and if you don&#x27;t want that:<p>&quot;The Dropbox app can also run in headless mode, once you meet the essential system requirements [64 bit, supported filesystem, Glibc 2.27+]. This runs without a graphical user interface. You can install the app, then control Dropbox using the Linux Command Line Interface (CLI).&quot;

I don&#x27;t use a desktop environment, so I&#x27;ll cancel my Dropbox subscription. It&#x27;s a good moment to move to an european storage provider I suppose.

Some interesting news from Dropbox app this morning: &quot;Your desktop environment doesn&#x27;t support the Dropbox tray icon. Starting May 27, 2025, Dropbox updates will require App Indicator support. To continue using the tray, update your environment.&quot;<p>Only Unity and KDE Plasma desktop environments are supported, others, e.g. GNOME, XFCE, MATE will require installing an extension or plugin.

Gnome dropped status icon support as they think it&#x27;s more consistent for the user to have a window for interacting with the application and do notifications via the notifications system.<p>I can see how people like a &quot;dropbox&quot; icon, especially Dropbox, as it makes them stand out but also I can see how it does not fit with the Gnome idea of consistency.<p>I used to be conditioned to using certain apps via their status icon as that was the only way to interact with them but as a long time user of Gnome I don&#x27;t miss them now and use apps like syncthing-gtk via the app and notifications just fine. So for me, if I was a dropbox user, this would feel like a step backwards.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.gnome.org&#x2F;Initiatives(2f)StatusIconMigration(2f)Guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.gnome.org&#x2F;Initiatives(2f)StatusIconMigration(2f...</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.gnome.org&#x2F;Initiatives(2f)StatusIconMigration(2f)FAQ.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.gnome.org&#x2F;Initiatives(2f)StatusIconMigration(2f...</a>

Honestly it&#x27;s the first thing I install on Gnome. It&#x27;s just annoying that it&#x27;s not on by default and I don&#x27;t understand what the devs have against it. I use the Tailscale, Nextcloud, ProtonVPN and Solaar indicators.<p>I could understand if they &quot;rethought&quot; how indicators work, but why make everyone jump through the hoop of installing an extension? (At least that is how it is on Arch and NixOS, Ubuntu may be different).<p>Other than this, I absolutely love Gnome, I feel 0 need to tweak (other than before mentioned), some nicer tiling would be nice thought ;) Also: Requiring an App Indicator seems a bit harsh on the more minimal DEs. Are there any apps that are like a window but with your indicators or something?

Time to get an FTP account, mount it locally with curlftpfs, and then use SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9224">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9224</a>

What&#x27;s the news?<p>System tray has been with us since Windows 95

Everything old is new again: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;askubuntu.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;821061&#x2F;dropbox-appindicator-menu-broken-in-gnome-flashback" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;askubuntu.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;821061&#x2F;dropbox-appindicator-...</a><p>Should your setup need it, might be able to hack support through env vars. Innovation, everyone.

I finally go so fed up with drop box, every time I login more and more popups trying to get me to upgrade, etc. It was the final push to just use my NAS Software to self host my files. In the past it wasn&#x27;t as reliable as DropBox but with hardware now and Tailscale its much easier and much better experience.

It&#x27;s kinda sad how much &quot;linux desktop&quot; relies on GTK. I have my beef with dbus as well, but I wonder if you could do the indicator icons by only using the dbus protocol.

Dropbox is scanning every file users upload. You can lose your whole paid account in a moment of seconds with years of work because they didn&#x27;t like something. Their response: you can sue us in an American court, good luck. Using Dropbox, you need to have a backup of your data outside of it which pretty much negates the whole aspect of using it in the first place.<p>Moved to Nextcloud and never felt better.