Bug 428327

Created attachment 132784 [details]
stuck tray widget

SUMMARY
After unplugging a laptop from its charger battery monitor widget in tray stays stuck on the charging state. Everywhere else I have been able to look, the system is reporting discharging. This includes the menu which pops up by clicking the widget. Picture of this is attached.

The real problem is that this somehow disables all notifications about low battery power and more importantly prevents the laptop from hibernating when the battery is almost depleted and hence can cause serious data loss and it also puts a lot of strain on the battery itself. The only way I have been able to temporarily reset the state shown in the icon is a reboot.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. plug a charger to a laptop
2. wait for a while
3. unplug the charger

OBSERVED RESULT
Battery widget shows "charging" even though the charger is not plugged and more importantly the system behaves as if the charger was plugged in.

EXPECTED RESULT
Battery widget shows "running on battery". System notifies about low power and takes action according to it.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux/KDE Plasma: Debian Bullseye and Manjaro
(available in About System)
KDE Plasma Version: 5.17.5 and 5.19.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.70.0 and 5.74.0
Qt Version: 5.14.2 and 5.15.1

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The problem does not always appear instantaneously. When I start the system unplugged, everything is fine. If the charger is plugged in and in a matter of seconds again unplugged the system mostly behaves as expected. But when left to charge for a while the power management state gets stuck, always. Notifications are set and working in the case of unplugging the charger immediately. The change of the state is known to the widget for while it is hidden while charging when the charger is unplugged the widget appears.

I have found two other people mentioning the same problem: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/battery-icon-is-constantly-in-charging-mode/27605/8 and https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/ey39zg/the_battery_indicator_icon_is_frequently_stuck_on/fgf01ud/ with no solution.

I have also experienced this issue on multiple systems. My laptop is running Debian Bullseye (currently testing) with KDE Plasma 5.17.5. While this version is not very old it is not very recent either and for this reason I have downloaded current Manjaro with KDE and confirmed the issue is also present in this system which is running on KDE Plasma 5.19.5. In this case the system was running as live session from a bootable usb. Another laptop running Debian stable with KDE Plasma 5.14.5 does not have this issue.

While I have not tried the very last version od KDE Plasma I did my best to check the changelog summary and haven't found anything like this. I also believe that at least the version 5.19.5 is recent enough.