wmsystemtray(1)

💖 wmsystemtray(1) — the girlies' guide to the freedesktop.org system tray dockapp 💖

okay so bestie, pull up a chair, because I'm about to make you obsessed with a Window Maker dock app. This is wmsystemtray, a section 1 (1) general commands manual page, and honestly? it ate.

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✨ NAME ✨

wmsystemtray — a freedesktop.org system tray, but make it a Window Maker dock app 🎀

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

wmsystemtray [options]

that's it. that's the whole vibe. options go in, tray icons come out. slay.

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so wmsystemtray is a system tray that uses the freedesktop.org system tray protocol, and it's designed as a Window Maker dock app. main character energy, fr fr.

and the way that it's lowkey stacked? it can display more than one dock window, so there's room for way more tray icons than your average setup. plus it can scroll through the icons if there are more present than will actually fit. no cap. 💅

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

every single one, bestie. I'm not skipping a thing.

• -display <display name> — the name of the display to use. that's it, that's the option.
• --help — display usage information. iconic behaviour honestly.
• -V, --version — display the version number and exit. bye bestie 👋
• -v, --verbose — print more messages to the console. may be repeated. the more times you say it, the more it yaps 💬
• -q, --quiet — print fewer messages to the console. may be repeated. shhh 🤫
• -s, --small — use 16x16 tray icons, instead of 24x24. in other words, fit 9 icons instead of 4 in one dock window. tiny icons, huge slay 🧚
• -w <n>, --windows <n> — specifies the number of dock windows to open. each dock window is assigned a unique name (i.e. the first is wmsystemtray.wmsystemtray0, the second wmsystemtray.wmsystemtray1, and so on), so they can be reliably positioned in the dock or clip. naming your children so you can find them again 🫶
• --id-windows — print the window's index number on the window, to make it easier to dock them in the right order. note that if there are enough tray icons active, this number may be covered up. 💀 rude but true
• --fill-rows — normally the first dock window is completely filled before any tray icons are placed in the second. this option fills the top row of each dock window before placing any icons in the second row, which may make more sense if you arrange the dock windows horizontally. horizontal girlies, this one's for you 🌈
• --arrows <place> — normally, every dock window has both left and right scrolling arrows at the bottom. specifying --arrows horizontal places the left arrow only on the first window and the right arrow only on the last, which may make more sense if the windows are arranged horizontally. --arrows vertical places the arrows only on the last window, which may make more sense if the windows are arranged vertically. pick your fighter ⬅️➡️
• -c <color>, --fgcolor <color> — specify a color for the page indicator and --id-windows indicators, instead of black. colors may be specified in any format recognized by XParseColor — in short, that's any color name in X's rgb.txt or an RGB color specified as "rgb:rr/gg/gg". 🎨
• --bgcolor <color> — in non-Window Maker mode, specify the color for the window background. the default is to shape the window to fit the used area and to set ParentRelative, which attempts to copy whatever is behind the window. see-through moment ✨
• --non-wmaker — activate non-Window Maker mode. this provides limited support for using the program in window managers that don't do Window Maker-style dockapps; the application still sizes itself as a 64x64 window, however, so you might be better served by a more traditional system tray. > bestie, it said limited, don't come for me 😭

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🎀 DISPLAY 🎀

the main portion of the dockapp has room for four 24x24 or nine 16x16 tray icons. at the bottom are left and right arrows for paging when more tray icons are available than can be displayed at once, with an indicator between showing the current "page" of icons and total number of pages currently available. it's giving little carousel of friends 🦋

in addition to left-clicking either scrolling arrows, the mouse's scroll wheel may be used on the bottom section to change pages. scroll wheel girlies rise up 🌸

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💜 SIGNALS 💜

SIGUSR1 and SIGUSR2 may be used to change pages. a program such as xbindkeys may be used to send these signals to wmsystemtray on appropriate key presses. keybind it, bestie, you know you want to ⌨️

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💀 BUGS 💀

the balloon message portion of the freedesktop.org protocol is not implemented at this time. the author's heard that the official Gnome system tray doesn't implement this either, and most tray apps seem to directly use the dbus desktop notifications service. not me being messy about Gnome 🙈

most of the Xembed specification is not implemented, as it is not needed here. for example, the only point to redirecting input focus is to allow the outer window to see input events (and then the outer window has to forward those events to the embeds). but since we don't really care, we can just let the icons get events directly. similarly, we don't take focus or activation, and we don't do accellerators.

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⭐ SPECIFICATIONS ⭐

• freedesktop.org System Tray Protocol Specification
• freedesktop.org XEmbed Protocol Specification

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

wmsystemtray was written by Brad Jorsch <anomie@users.sourceforge.net>.

email regarding wmsystemtray should be sent to anomie@users.sourceforge.net. slide into the inbox respectfully 💌

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🔥 INSPIRATION 🔥

okay storytime, because this part is genuinely the best bit.

when the author finally decided to make use of some applications that work via system tray icons, they looked around for a tray for their preferred window manager. some didn't integrate well (they didn't want a bar at the top or bottom of the screen), some dockapps couldn't handle more than 4 icons at all, some could do 4 icons with paging (and much crashing if any program was killed), some could do more than 4 icons by creating arbitrary numbers of app icons (but undockable, because they were created "as needed"). so they decided to write their own, combining the best features into a stable app.

and that, bestie, is how we got here. we love a determined icon 💅

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and that's the whole page! this manual was dated February 22, 2014, and it's wmsystemtray(1) — section 1, general commands manual. mwah, take care of your tray icons for me 🫶💖✨