yad window icon on Wayland

johnraff · Yesterday 06:05:57

To set yad's window icon - the icon in the panel and title bar - you can use the option "--window-icon". This works fine on X11 but is ignored on Wayland. @micko01 discovered some time ago that "--name" can be used on Wayland instead, and I put it on my to-do list to add "--name=bunsenlabs" to all our yad scripts that had "--window-icon=distributor-logo-bunsenlabs".

That was in 2024, but I finally got round to Wayland-proofing our scripts yesterday, and found that it wasn't quite as simple as a straight substitution of --name for --window-icon. I posted a reply on Github just now, then noticed that it was on a PR that had been closed some time ago, maybe unlikely to be noticed, so @micko01 if you're nearby, maybe it would be better to discuss this here on the forum? Here's what I posted on GitHub:

I've been adding that --name arg to yad commands and found that it doesn't seem to be a direct mapping to an icon name. Unlike --window-icon it seems to refer to an appname like geany or firefox.

As far as I can tell, on X11 --name has no effect on the panel or title bar icon, which is set by --window-icon, although the name will appear in xprop under eg _OB_APP_NAME.

On Wayland, --window-icon is ignored but --name can determine the choice of panel and titlebar icon. If --name refers to an app which has a .desktop file in /usr/share/applications then the icon specified there will be used. Otherwise it seems to be ignored (I'm happy to be proved wrong here).

So, on Wayland:
1) If bunsenlabs.desktop is added to /usr/share/applications with contents:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=BunsenLabs
Icon=bunsenlabs
NoDisplay=true

Then a BL script with 'yad....--name=bunsenlabs....' will show the BL icon in the panel and titlebar.

2) The names of other apps with .desktop files can also be used to display their icon.

3) Other icon names like 'dialog-warning' cannot be used with --name: they will be ignored.

If the number of such generic icon names that we'd want to use with yad scripts is small, then maybe we could make a similar .desktop file for each one? Since they're not referring to anything resembling an application, though, this feels a bit hackish...

hhh · Yesterday 06:19:34

You guessed right with 1) the bl.desktop file. No second guessy! For now that's all we need, leave 2) and 3) and the hacks and the fussiness out of it until it's necessary, my two cents.

hhh · Yesterday 06:24:33

^^ Setting up BL Carbon Wayland in a VM now. Let the games begin!

It's just install and update carbon, then install the one meta-package, right?

sudo apt install bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin

Last edited by hhh (Yesterday 07:06:27)

johnraff · Yesterday 08:35:01

^yup

Look out for an update to bunsen-configs and bunsen-configs-wayland-plugin in a week or so that might tweak one or two things for the better (like adding a lot of yad --name=bunsenlabs options). Nothing earth shattering though.

#1 Yesterday 06:05:57

yad window icon on Wayland

#2 Yesterday 06:19:34

Re: yad window icon on Wayland

#3 Yesterday 06:24:33

Re: yad window icon on Wayland

#4 Yesterday 08:35:01

Re: yad window icon on Wayland

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