Choice is provided by using an icon theme without symbolic icons. Oxygen is one such icon theme, so the change should have had no effect for Oxygen. Your attachment does not depict symbolic icons but rather *missing* icons. That's a different issue.

Can you report which specific apps/tray items have missing icons?

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #1)
> Choice is provided by using an icon theme without symbolic icons. Oxygen is
> one such icon theme, so the change should have had no effect for Oxygen.
> Your attachment does not depict symbolic icons but rather *missing* icons.
> That's a different issue.

No, not different: attachment was made for Bug 486752 and they just demonstrate the icons previously were colorful:
- attachment 174731 [details]
end become ugly symbolic:
- attachment 175143 [details]
Symbolic icons were introduced here: Bug 487026 which breaks many years of habit and many people do not like. So just asking to do analogous to Bug 457077 which allows standard icons for KickOff.

> Can you report which specific apps/tray items have missing icons?

It was reported and fixed there: 
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=486752#c10

That one is different: old attachments just demonstrate icons were colorful.

Again, those missing icons aren't *symbolic* icons. They're *missing* icons. If the system tray asks for `bluetooth-symbolic` and the theme only has `bluetooth`, then our icon loader is supposed to fall back to `bluetooth` automatically.

It looks like what you're experiencing is a bug in the Oxygen icon theme itself.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 486752 ***

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #3)
> Again, those missing icons aren't *symbolic* icons. They're *missing* icons.
> If the system tray asks for `bluetooth-symbolic` and the theme only has
> `bluetooth`, then our icon loader is supposed to fall back to `bluetooth`
> automatically.

I want system tray asks for `bluetooth`, not `bluetooth-symbolic` - this is the bug is about:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=487026#c8
So please do not close as duplicate as this is wrong!

> It looks like what you're experiencing is a bug in the Oxygen icon theme
> itself.

No! They are not missed any more - used symbolic icons, but should be used standard ones!

> *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 486752 ***

You ask to open new bug:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=487026#c10
then close it - it is boring a lot!

(In reply to Aleksey Kontsevich from comment #4)
> I want system tray asks for `bluetooth`, not `bluetooth-symbolic`
It literally doesn't matter. If the system tray asks for `bluetooth-symbolic` and it's not found, the icon loader is supposed to fall back to `bluetooth` and give you that.

If it's not your icon theme that's broken, then it's the icon loader. But there in principle there should be no problem asking for `bluetooth-symbolic` when the icon theme only has `bluetooth`.

So let's focus on the problem (some icons are missing for you) rather than making it option for the system tray to ask for the "-symbolic" version. That won't help anything.

Please describe the actual issue in clean steps that I can perform to try to reproduce it myself.

This is not a duplicate of bug 486752.

Oxygen used uncolored ("symbolic" by today's naming, although not separated from the colorful version) icons since 4.5 (which is the first KDE version I used BTW): https://kde.org/announcements/4/4.5.0/apps-overview.png.

This is also the case now, after bug 486752 has been resolved, even though different "symbolic" icons are used.

What Aleksey means, I guess, is to have an option to configure the tray to use "normal" icons. Just that, no matter what theme is used – Breeze, Oxygen, Papirus or something else. (That's why it's assigned to the System Tray widget of Plasma.) And it makes sense to me, I would probably switch to this if I had a choice. (Third-part apps tend not to use "symbolic" icons anyway…)

(To clarify: I hadn't seen Nate's message until I finished mine).

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #1)
> Your attachment does not depict symbolic icons but rather *missing* icons.
> That's a different issue.

The reporter's complaint isn't the screenshot with the missing icons (attachment 174731 [details], where some icons are missing, but the ones that aren't missing are colorful), but attachment 175143 [details], where the missing icons were fixed, but some of the icons that were previously colorful became symbolic.

> Why not to ask people first? Many people do not like this behaviour: I like standard colorful icons in the system tray.  I want colorful icons everywhere back! Could we have the choice please???!!! If it is possible for Kickoff, why not for the systemtray as well?!

To be fair to the designer of the Oxygen icons, Nuno Pinheiro, systray icons were already symbolic in his Air Plasma theme since KDE 4.5. AFAIUI until Plasma 6, Plasma themes shipped their own icons, and Air used symbolic icons for the systray, as did later Breeze. Only with Plasma 6 did systray icons briefly and unintentionally become colorful (and in other cases missing), as Plasma now uses icons from the system-wide icon theme. Then Nuno copied the symbolic systray icons from his Plasma theme into Oxygen and/or drew new icons where needed, which solved the missing icons, and made systray icons symbolic again when using the Oxygen icon theme.

> Choice is provided by using an icon theme without symbolic icons. Oxygen is
> one such icon theme, so the change should have had no effect for Oxygen.

No longer. Nuno solved the missing icons by putting symbolic icons in the Oxygen icon theme for the icons the systray needs, but that also resulted in the systray using symbolic icons again even where colorful icons were already available. Both of the screenshots we referred to were using Oxygen.

However, some of us dislike symbolic icons, including on the system tray, and have ever since they were introduced a decade ago. There are probably many of us among those who still use Oxygen. Personally, one reason is that I generally dislike minimalistic aesthetics, but the more important one is that they make it harder to find the icon I'm looking for. With colorful icons I can find an icon with a glance, with symbolic icons I have to focus on each one until I find the one I'm looking for. Someone should do an experiment: I'd bet people take 50+% longer to find a given icon among a bunch of icons if they are symbolic than if they are colorful Oxygen-style icons.

Some possible solutions:

- Make a version of Oxygen with the symbolic versions of icons removed when a non-symbolic version is available (and perhaps of other icon styles that have some different-looking symbolic and non-symbolic icons, and are likely to be used by people who dislike symbolic icons – so not Breeze). Suggested at https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=486752#c36.
- Make versions of Plasma themes that request non-symbolic icons. Suggested at https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=486752#c34. This makes less sense IMO: the preference for symbolic vs. non-symbolic icons is not necessarily related to the preferred Plasma theme, so we'd have to make two versions of every Plasma theme. Also, is this even actually decided by the Plasma theme in the case of the systray icons?
- Add a global toggle that makes the icon loader prefer non-symbolic icons everywhere if available, even if the application requests the symbolic one. What the hell, perhaps also add the option to prefer symbolic icons everywhere possible, if there are people who prefer that.
- Add a toggle to the systray applet whether you prefer symbolic icons. Depending on it, either use symbolic icons whenever both variants are available, or use non-symbolic ones, specifically in the system tray. This makes sense, as when using the Oxygen style, the system tray is the only place I encounter symbolic icons. (And perhaps a few icons here and there that aren't available in Oxygen so they fall back to Breeze, but those are probably only available in Breeze in a symbolic style anyway.)

(In reply to Aleksey Kontsevich from comment #4)
> You ask to open new bug:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=487026#c10
> then close it - it is boring a lot!

As someone who agrees with your request, I tell you that your attitude is uncalled for. This, for instance, was a simple misunderstanding of which screenshot you referred to as the problem.

(In my last comment I included quotes from both Nate and the reporter Aleksey, but I didn't always include which one was from whom. To clarify, the 1st and the 3rd quotes were from Nate, and the 2nd and the 4th from Aleksey.)

I agree!
I'm really tired of this colorless 2D flat design!
Like we would be in a pre-Windows XP era.
Or on very low power computers.
Honestly I expected that by this time Plasma would have a design better than Windows 7 or at least comparable to it.
With colored 3D icons, pictures, shadows, transparency, glass effects, etc and in turn it's worse than Windows XP.
In my opinion the current default design should be used only in cases where the devices is too low power or in maximum energy saving mode.

As the author of the original bug report, which did lead to the symbolic change: 

I would have, as written in the original report, indeed preferred an option.
However, my liking for having options is known and quite often "overruled". 
I would still prefer there to be an option, but since I wanted the opposite, I was happy enough to accept the new default.

Note that my original request came from having had to use Gnome at work, which has a similar feature, to optionally un-hue systray icons to make them monochrome. So even Gnome (I think the systray might be a third party app, potentially canonical, mind) has an option, so personally I'd still prefer the option and would request for the VDG to reconsider.

Given we noticed that people are unhappy with kickoff and offered an option there, I think it would be consistent and fair to offer it here, too.

And for the argument of systrays having been monochrome for a while: only partially true, some OSes do (or at least try to) a distinction between system icons (monochrome) and app icons (colourful)

However, I won't partake in this discussion again, personally.

(In reply to Christian (Fuchs) from comment #11)
> As the author of the original bug report, which did lead to the symbolic
> change: 

Was that proposal (Bug 487026) even implemented and merged? I thought the change Aleksey and I observed and complained about (icons like volume and network becoming symbolic) was the result of Nuno adding symbolic icons for these to the Oxygen icon style. Wasn't your proposal about systray icons for apps running in the background (like KMail), as opposed to built-in systray icons like volume or network? I've observed no change to those, they remain colorful, though perhaps only because Oxygen doesn't have symbolic versions of their icons.

(In reply to Grósz Dániel from comment #12)
> Was that proposal (Bug 487026) even implemented and merged? 

Given that this is where the discussion started and this bug stems from, based on Nates comments there plus this bug being against said component, my guess was "yes". As I am not on 6.3 yet, I didn't test, mind.

(In reply to Grósz Dániel from comment #8)

> However, some of us dislike symbolic icons, including on the system tray,
> and have ever since they were introduced a decade ago. There are probably
> many of us among those who still use Oxygen. Personally, one reason is that
> I generally dislike minimalistic aesthetics, but the more important one is
> that they make it harder to find the icon I'm looking for. With colorful
> icons I can find an icon with a glance, with symbolic icons I have to focus
> on each one until I find the one I'm looking for. 

Exactly! Same perception: colorful much easier and faster to find: for example by color, then by shape. With symbolic: need to watch all of them to distinguish the necessary one only by its shape.

(In reply to John from comment #10)
> I agree!
> I'm really tired of this colorless 2D flat design!
> Like we would be in a pre-Windows XP era.
> Or on very low power computers.

Exactly! 100% agree!!!

(In reply to Piotr Doroszewski from comment #6)
> This is not a duplicate of bug 486752.
> 
> Oxygen used uncolored ("symbolic" by today's naming, although not separated
> from the colorful version) icons since 4.5 (which is the first KDE version I
> used BTW): https://kde.org/announcements/4/4.5.0/apps-overview.png.

That white Oxygen symbolic version was much better than today's ugly black which does not correspond to the Oxygen style at all! However I still prefer all to be colorful.

(In reply to Christian (Fuchs) from comment #11)
> As the author of the original bug report, which did lead to the symbolic
> change: 

> Given we noticed that people are unhappy with kickoff and offered an option
> there, I think it would be consistent and fair to offer it here, too.

Agree!

Related issue:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=457077#c9

(In reply to Christian (Fuchs) from comment #11)
> As the author of the original bug report, which did lead to the symbolic
> change: 
> 
> ...................
> Note that my original request came from having had to use Gnome at work,
> which has a similar feature, to optionally un-hue systray icons to make them
> monochrome. So even Gnome (I think the systray might be a third party app,
> potentially canonical, mind) has an option, so personally I'd still prefer
> the option and would request for the VDG to reconsider.
> 
> Given we noticed that people are unhappy with kickoff and offered an option
> there, I think it would be consistent and fair to offer it here, too.
> 
> And for the argument of systrays having been monochrome for a while: only
> partially true, some OSes do (or at least try to) a distinction between
> system icons (monochrome) and app icons (colourful)
> 
> However, I won't partake in this discussion again, personally.
That's very nice and considerate!
Personally looking a bit back at what I considered the best OSes and designs that I have ever used with pleasure, I see that Windows XP used a colourful systray:
https://dl.kaskus.id/winpoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/icon-system-tray_04.jpeg
While Windows 7 used a monochrome one:
https://static1.makeuseofimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/system-tray-drag-and-drop.jpg
https://www.groovypost.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/image_33.png
Unless your device had a Bluetooth adapter too or you have attached a USB pendrive, which added the Safely remove device icon:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/images/winenv-notification-image2.png
If you clicked on the "Customize..." you could set any of them to be permanently visible on the main systray like I was doing with the "Safely remove device" as I didn't want to always have to open that drawer.

Having the possibility to have them colorful and then "downgrade" them to colorless / monochrome would indeed be great and make everyone happy.
It's cool to have the system's incons as monochrome to differentiate them from others, but that could also by done by other ways, like putting them all to the right (next to the clock & date) or by using dividers / separators and that should not forbid people from having colorful system icons, if that's what they want.

(In reply to Aleksey Kontsevich from comment #14)
> (In reply to Grósz Dániel from comment #8)
> 
> > However, some of us dislike symbolic icons, including on the system tray,
> > and have ever since they were introduced a decade ago. There are probably
> > many of us among those who still use Oxygen. Personally, one reason is that
> > I generally dislike minimalistic aesthetics, but the more important one is
> > that they make it harder to find the icon I'm looking for. With colorful
> > icons I can find an icon with a glance, with symbolic icons I have to focus
> > on each one until I find the one I'm looking for. 
> 
> Exactly! Same perception: colorful much easier and faster to find: for
> example by color, then by shape. With symbolic: need to watch all of them to
> distinguish the necessary one only by its shape.
Same here too!
If find much easier (less effort) and faster to find by color and then by shape.
Like with the Brightness and Color icon which takes me a while to find, because it's not next to the Power and Battery where I expect it to be and there are other things I don't need at that moment between them, for which I created this:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=498827
And because the sun shape is not yellow.

I understand also the point of view of KDE developers as somebody needs to create both colored and monochrome versions for every icon and the code is harder to read and work with having so many options.
But at the same time, in the default view there's only one start menu and system tray and maybe this should as customizable as possible so everyone feels like home having to use these two thing very often.
The ability to reorder the items is also missing, so not having the ability of using colorful icons too is on top of that.
Hopefully someone finds the right tradeoff / balance between all these things.

Created attachment 178532 [details]
Oxygen tray icons monochrome (Feb. 18, 2025)

Created attachment 178533 [details]
Oxygen tray icons monochrome (Feb. 18, 2025)

Created attachment 178534 [details]
My adjusted Oxygen tray icons (not complete)

I added two screenshots, the first one is how the icons now look since Oxygen moved to monochrome tray icons which in my opinion is very much not what I would expect from the Oxygen icon theme. Also it's kinda messy, some are monochrome some not.

The second screenshot is after I spent some time re-oxygenating the icons (replacing monochrome with colourful oxygen icons, some icons I adjusted for my own preference) but it's incomplete as anyone can see (vaults, power management, and brightness I haven't found where exactly they're located and also not sure how I want them to look).

I know someone worked on making those monochrome icons for Oxygen and I appreciate that, but I much prefer the old Oxygen colourful icons.

(In reply to Darryl from comment #20)
> Created attachment 178533 [details]
> Oxygen tray icons monochrome (Feb. 18, 2025)

Why they are white for You? For me they are black: how to make them white?

(In reply to Darryl from comment #21)
> Created attachment 178534 [details]
> My adjusted Oxygen tray icons (not complete)

Very cool!

There is no such thing as "standard colorful icons"; your icon theme determines what's considered standard.

So if you want a different appearance for the System Tray icons provided by an icon theme that isn't Breeze, then you need to talk to the people involved in building that icon theme.

Specifically, you need  to ask them to use a colorful appearance for the System Tray icons, and also either not include any icons with the text "-symbolic" at the end of their name, or else make those icons be symlinks to the colorful versions.

There's really not any more to it than that.

There's nothing actionable at the level of the System Tray in this bug report, and it's filling with with conversation that won't help anyone here achieve what they actually want, so I'm closing it. Thanks for understanding.

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #24)
> There is no such thing as "standard colorful icons";
If You do not like the term please rename but not close the bug!!! There is a term: "colorful icon" in mentioned Bug 457077 "Favorites category uses a monochrome icon, whereas everything else uses a colorful icon". Why it is allowed there and not here?! Don't spit on people!!!

> So if you want a different appearance for the System Tray icons provided by
> an icon theme that isn't Breeze, then you need to talk to the people
> involved in building that icon theme.

This is just a possible solution of the problem which needs to be solved.

> Specifically, you need  to ask them to use a colorful appearance for the
> System Tray icons, and also either not include any icons with the text
> "-symbolic" at the end of their name, or else make those icons be symlinks
> to the colorful versions.

I want to ask tray developers! Why do I need to ask icons people?!

> There's really not any more to it than that.

Not it is more than that: it is complete people disregard - no more than that!
 
> There's nothing actionable at the level of the System Tray in this bug
> report, and it's filling with with conversation that won't help anyone here
> achieve what they actually want, so I'm closing it. Thanks for understanding.

Do not thank! I do not understand this and hate COMPLETE disregard for people!!! If you do KDE for yourself - make it private and close source code and bugzilla.

> I want to ask tray developers! Why do I need to ask icons people?!
I am a tray developer. The answer to your question is because it's the reason why icon theming exists: so that people can express preferences like this *systemwide*.

The reason why Kickoff category icons are configurable is because this mechanism is very old, and predates icon theming IIRC. It's not feasible to allow every single icon everywhere in the system to be customized individually in the same manner as it would conflict with the systemwide icon theming and make customization complicated because there would be two sources of truth: what came from the icon theme, and the custom icon name chosen by the user. It could get very confusing.

You can rename the bug report all you want, but I've given you the answer, sorry. I know it's frustrating to be told "no", but sometimes that's how life is.

Could we please leave this open.
It's correctly marked as wishlist, so "closed not a bug" doesn't make sense. It's obviously not a bug, it's a feature request.
And while personally I don't support it (I wanted the opposite) and while I don't agree with the tonality, I also think it's not good for us as KDE to close wishlist items like that. 

Especially with both a reason invalid and an argumentation which is based on "use a colourful icon set", which is not what this feature request is about, but rather to turn off a specific code path that forces icons to be monochrome. Which seems to be a valid wish supported by various users.

If it makes you feel better, it can be CLOSED INTENTIONAL rather than CLOSED NOT A BUG.

Ultimately the code path you're talking about has almost no impact here, and I think people are focusing on it unnecessarily. It only has an effect when you're using an icon theme that has symbolic and colorful versions of the same icons. If you're a person who never wants any symbolic icons, the solution is to use an icon theme without symbolic icons. Continuing to use an icon theme with both symbolic and colorful versions of the system tray icons, and then slipping a switch in the system tray that says "prefer colorful icons when possible" would give you a worse result, since you'd still see symbolic icons in 1001 other places.

The specific issue that Aleksey wants such a setting to work around is actually a bug in the Oxygen icon theme; apparently it claims to have symbolic icons, but they're "half colorful, half symbolic" and Aleksey considers them ugly. That's fair. But it's something that needs to be resolved by either changing the icons in the Oxygen icon theme to not be ugly and fake symbolic, or to use a different icon theme.

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #28)
> If it makes you feel better, it can be CLOSED INTENTIONAL rather than CLOSED
> NOT A BUG.
> 
> Ultimately the code path you're talking about has almost no impact here, and
> I think people are focusing on it unnecessarily. 

I disagree for multiple reasons. First of all for consistency (e.g. offering the option in other places since we noticed that users care a lot about it, and we stood on quite some feet there), but also because while it is possible to create your own or use a different icon theme, without that option you are forced to delete icons every time symbolic ones are (re)-added and either have to workaround that on every update, or create a forked set and thus no longer get other updates.

Long story short: while some people might have preferences or even opinions on it, it's imho an entirely valid wish, and thus closing it with closed intentional (or not a bug) is imho bad practice and could be done on just 95% of our feature requests if we wanted.

Especially as this imho should be a broader discussion iff we want to set on something final, and I saw none of it happen in the usual places. 

> The specific issue that Aleksey wants such a setting to work around is
> actually a bug in the Oxygen icon theme; apparently it claims to have
> symbolic icons, but they're "half colorful, half symbolic" and Aleksey
> considers them ugly. That's fair. But it's something that needs to be
> resolved by either changing the icons in the Oxygen icon theme to not be
> ugly and fake symbolic, or to use a different icon theme.

Only half-true, the reason why this feature request was created was my feature request about the opposite, which got implemented in 6.3 (well, it's broken, but different problem), I'd know, since I follwed the discussion since then.
The problem in oxygen was brought up way after, and is imho just an excuse to close this one.

I think the best and reasonable option is to implement all of these:

- add missed icons to Oxygen if any comparing to Breeze
- Oxygen variant without symbolic
- Add option to systray or better systemsettings not to add `-symbolic` suffix to icon names not to produce ugly look and feel.

Will this work? :)
> find /usr/share/icons/ -iname *-symbolic.* -delete
Probably you will need to refresh some caches etc

I would probably agree this is also an icon theme problem and stupid modern theme design tendencies and fashion. So I tried several themes:

- Oxygen
- Kora
- Breeze
- bloom (Deepin)

and even deleted all the *symbolic* icons in /usr/share/icons - result: some icons become colorful, some are still in the symbolic style as they were drawn in this stupid way. So need to fix that ugly tendencies in mind then soft will be fixed!