Since Gnome 44 there is a new UI to show apps (i.e. messengers, sync clients, …) that run in the background. It is supposed to take the place of the tray icons. In my experience it’s basically not working, though.
The only app I use that uses the UI is the nextcloud client. But that thing’s autostart seems to be very unreliable and most of the time I have to start it manually after booting. Could be an issue with the app and not with Gnome, but I don’t know.
I also use Telegram and Element, but both still seem to use the old tray icons that you now need to install an extension for to work. Meaning that with vanilla Gnome when you close the Telegram window, the app is stopped and can’t receive massages in the background.
Is the new UI broken or are app developers just not implementing it into their apps or what’s wrong with the current situaltion?
All those same options are available by right clicking on the app. Though thinking some more, the status icon being dynamic does give it some extra flexibility, I think it can show recently launched games. Still, does that mean Firefox should get a status icon so that you can access recently opened sites? Should your file manager?
If they can be hidden, like in Windows, I dont really mind if every app has one. I’ll hide the ones I dont care about.
The app dock isnt visible by default, so thats a partitial solution, but I’d prefer to be able to access it directly without opening a menu or overview first.