Bug 504085

Summary:	Brightness & Batteries widget erroneously says "No Batteries Available"
Product:	[Plasma] plasmashell	Reporter:	Jonathan Gilbert <c6kargn6hz>
Component:	Power and Battery widget	Assignee:	Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Severity:	normal	CC:	kde, kdedev, natalie_clarius
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	5.27.12
Target Milestone:	1.0
Platform:	Ubuntu
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Jonathan Gilbert 2025-05-12 05:09:16 UTC

SUMMARY
The Brightness & Batteries widget can get into a state where it doesn't show any battery-related information, despite the system being a laptop which definitely has a battery. In this state, other parts of the system still respond normally; for instance, when switching to/from battery, the corresponding system notifications are generated.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. I don't know what caused it to start doing this.

OBSERVED RESULT
Hovering over the Brightness & Batteries system tray icon displays a pop up which states, "No Batteries Available".

EXPECTED RESULT
The popup should show the laptop's battery and its current state.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux/KDE Plasma: Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.12
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.115.0
Qt Version: 5.15.13

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
`upower -e` lists the battery, and `upower -d` lists detailed information about the battery.

`dbus_monitor` shows events being raised when the battery switches to/from a charging state.

Info Center lists the battery details and its current state.

Only the system tray icon seems to be affected.

This is not corrected by rebooting the system.

Comment 1 Jonathan Gilbert 2025-05-12 05:18:22 UTC

Correction: This is not _always_ corrected by rebooting the system. The last two reboots did not correct it. Just now, a reboot did correct it. But, I don't know if or when it will recur, because I don't know what precipitated it in the first place.

Comment 2 TraceyC 2025-05-13 16:15:15 UTC

Thanks for the bug report.Unfortunately, Plasma 5.27 is very old and out of support from KDE at this point.

I would suggest you report this to Ubuntu, they're the ones who bear the responsibility of maintaining the older software they ship with their LTS releases. Unfortunately KDE itself cannot provide support for very old Plasma versions anymore.

You can report the bug through https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

Thanks for your understanding.