Return Pidgin and Skype to the top GNOME Shell panel

I want to tell you a simple action to optimize the workspace, which will simplify the lives of many GNOME Shell users who are used to seeing icons of their favorite IM ( Pidgin , etc.), Skype or other applications in the tray. In the standard setting, they are in the “bottom” tray, which is called by hovering the mouse on the bottom edge of the screen. The inconvenience of the mentioned "lower" tray in terms of communication via jabber, skype, icq, etc. is that by skipping a message from someone (for example, moving away from the PC), it is impossible to see it when returning without an additional call to the default tray. The icon on the top panel immediately catches the eye, so skipping an important message or not responding to it in time is less likely.

On many resources, this issue was raised, but it is not easy to find a universal instruction, which would consist of a clear sequence of actions necessary to resolve the issue, taking into account some nuances.

Such an action is implemented with the help of additional system parameters, for the execution of which, incl. and managing user applications (GNOME Shell Extensions) in debian-like distributions (in my case it is Ubuntu 11.10 + GNOME Shell ), the gnome-tweak-tool package is used. If it is not installed yet, execute in the terminal:
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sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool 

Create two folders:

 mkdir ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/pidgin-status mkdir ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/skype-status 

Create files in each folder:

 nano ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/pidgin-status/extension.js 

with such content

 const StatusIconDispatcher = imports.ui.statusIconDispatcher; function enable() { StatusIconDispatcher.STANDARD_TRAY_ICON_IMPLEMENTATIONS['pidgin'] = 'pidgin'; } function disable() { StatusIconDispatcher.STANDARD_TRAY_ICON_IMPLEMENTATIONS['pidgin'] = ''; } function init() { } 

 nano ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/pidgin-status/metadata.json 

 { "shell-version": ["3.2.1", "3.2"], "uuid": "pidgin-status", "name": "Pidgin Status Icon", "description": "Integrates Pidgin Client into the status bar" } 

 nano ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/skype-status/extension.js 

with such content

 const StatusIconDispatcher = imports.ui.statusIconDispatcher; function enable() { StatusIconDispatcher.STANDARD_TRAY_ICON_IMPLEMENTATIONS['skype'] = 'skype'; } function disable() { StatusIconDispatcher.STANDARD_TRAY_ICON_IMPLEMENTATIONS['skype'] = ''; } function init() { } 

  nano ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/skype-status/metadata.json 

 { "shell-version": ["3.2.1", "3.2"], "uuid": "skype-status", "name": "Skype Status Icon", "description": "Integrates Skype Client into the status bar" } 

In the "shell-version" indicate the version of GNOME Shell, which you have installed.

End a user session.
Login to the system.
Go to Applications-Other-Additional System Options-Shell Extensions.
We include our additions.



Once again we complete the user session and log in to the system.
We launch Pidgin and Skype, we observe their icons on the top panel. Do not forget to enable the display of the icon in the settings of the Pidgin itself (Tools-Settings-Interface-Show the icon of the system tray), in Skype it is displayed automatically.



This method can also be used for other clients by substituting its name in the appropriate fields of the extension.js and metadata.json files.
It is also worth noting that with the additions of the user, you can configure a lot more interesting things. You can read more about this here .

Main sources of information:
forum.ubuntu.ru/index.php?topic=172495.0
mo.morsi.org/blog/taxonomy/term/72
extensions.gnome.org