mktrayicon

mktrayicon is a simple proxy program that lets you create and modify system tray icons without having to deal with a graphical toolkit like GTK.

mktrayicon can be used two ways: To create an icon that is controlled by a named pipe or, more simply, to create a non-interactive icon.

If a FIFO is not provided, mktrayicon will run until killed (e.g., pkill -f 'mktrayicon.*<ICON>'). If you are using a named pipe (FIFO) to control the icon, the pipe should already be created before you call mktrayicon.

Every line written to the pipe should contain a single letter specifying what operation to perform, optionally followed by a space and a parameter to the command. Each command should be terminated by a newline. The following commands are supported:

• q: Terminate mktrayicon and remove the tray icon
• i <icon>: Set the graphic to use for the tray icon; it can be a stock icon name (see /usr/share/icons) or path to a custom icon
• t <text>: Set the text to display in the icon tooltip
• t: Remove the icon tooltip
• c <cmnd>: Set the command to be execute when the user clicks the icon (cmnd is passed to /bin/sh -c)
• c: Remove the click handler
• m <label1>,<cmd1>|<label2>,<cmd2>|...: Set the labels and the corresponding commands to be executed when the user opens the icon menu (right-click usually) (cmd# is passed to /bin/sh -c)
• m: Remove the menu handler
• h: Hide the tray icon
• s: Show the tray icon

By default, the none tooltip icon is used. To change this, pass -i <stock_icon_name> or -i <path_to_custom_icon> when running mktrayicon.

Note that any script communicating with mktrayicon via the pipe must, for the time being, send q when they are done. Just removing the FIFO file will not cause the tray icon to be removed.

The command argument can be quoted with either ' or " if you wish it to include newlines. Other string interpolation may be added later. Quoted strings are terminated by a matching quote at the end of a line (ignoring whitespace). To escape a quote character at the end of a line to continue a quoted string, prefix it with a \.

The m(enu) command uses , as a delimiter between label and command and | as a delimiter between entries (label+command). If you want to use these two characters in a label or command, you have to escape them with \. You can make a blank label or a label without an action by leaving out the label or cmd respectively. For example:

$ echo "m Browser,firefox|Terminal,xterm|Label-only||,chromium" > /tmp/test
$ # (where `mkfifo /tmp/test` has been executed before)

Would give you a menu with five entries:

• "Browser", which launches firefox when clicked
• "Terminal", which launches xterm when clicked
• "Label-only", which does nothing if clicked
• An unlabeled, inactive entry (useful as a separator)
• An unlabeled entry which launches chromium when clicked

Why?

Because I wanted to be able to create tray icons from bash without all the hassle of interacting with GTK. Now I can create scripts for measuring stuff and instantly make tray icons out of them (3G signal strength for example).

Example run

This example is also in examples/test.sh so you can try running it.

#!/bin/bash

# Set up tray icon
mkfifo /tmp/$$.icon
./mktrayicon /tmp/$$.icon &

# Manipulate tray icon

# Click handling
echo "c xterm -e /bin/sh -c 'iwconfig; read'" > /tmp/$$.icon

# Change the icon and tooltip
for i in none weak ok good excellent; do
  echo "i network-wireless-signal-$i-symbolic" > /tmp/$$.icon
  echo "t Signal strength: $i" > /tmp/$$.icon
  sleep 2
done

# Remove tooltip and click handler
echo "c" > /tmp/$$.icon
echo "t" > /tmp/$$.icon

# Toggle the visibility of the icon for a bit
for i in {1..3}; do
  for j in h s; do
    echo $j > /tmp/$$.icon
    sleep 1
  done
done

# Remove tray icon
echo "q" > /tmp/$$.icon
rm /tmp/$$.icon

Known bugs

This is my first time using the GTK+ C library, and I've got to say it is less than pleasant to work with. My biggest issue has been trying to do blocking IO without blocking the GUI thread, as GTK seems to not like that.

Patches are very welcome!