SUMMARY I upgraded to the latest version of plasma and the layout I had configured for the system tray changed and it changed my panel layout in a way that makes it less usable for my workflow. My preferred layout for my workflow uses multiple rows of icons, or in this case, columns, as I have it on a vertically positioned panel. Upgrading to 5.23.3 seems to have broken or removed the option for multiple rows in the system tray. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Have 5.23.2 installed 2. Enable multiple rows for icons in the system tray 3. Upgrade to 5.23.3 OBSERVED RESULT Icons in the system tray reset to a single row and the option is missing in the settings dialog. EXPECTED RESULT Layout of icons in the system tray does not change between minor version upgrades. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Operating System: Arch Linux KDE Plasma Version: 5.23.3 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.87.0 Qt Version: 5.15.2 Kernel Version: 5.14.16-arch1-1 (64-bit) Graphics Platform: X11 Processors: 12 × AMD Ryzen 5 4600H with Radeon Graphics Memory: 15.0 GiB of RAM Graphics Processor: AMD RENOIR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
There was never an option to control the number rows in the System Tray, and certainly not one in Plasma 5.23.2 that got removed in 5.23.3. I am aware of one bugfix that went into 5.23.3 to increase the consistency of the icon sizes between the "Small" and "Scale with panel width" sizes for thin panels. It's possible you were taking advantage of that bug by accident. What is your panel thickness? Are you using the "Small" size, or "Scale with panel width"?
I think I must have mixed up two configuration features then and conflated system tray settings with something else. I had a panel thickness of 50px with small icons. Increasing the panel size did result in two rows appearing in the system tray in the current version.
Cool, sounds like everything is working as expected, then. Trying to squeeze two columns of tray icons into a 50px panel would require no margins anywhere and result in everything being quite squished. We got bug reports and complaints about this in the past. Two columns should appear at around 60 or 62px thickness, IIRC