SUMMARY The speaker symbol in the 'Icons-Only' task bar con no longer be removed. I was able to remove the speaker icon in the past, but the option to do so seems to no longer exist in the settings. I tried these (help) pages - https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/10r23y9/how_to_remove_mute_icon_on_icons_only_task_manager/ - https://discuss.kde.org/t/audio-in-taskbar-any-way-to-disable/15871 but the described option does no longer exist in the settings for the panel STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Play audio in any application 2. Open the Icons-Only taskbar settings 3. The setting does no longer exist OBSERVED RESULT Speaker icon can not be removed EXPECTED RESULT Speaker icon can be removed (as it was the case until now) SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONSOperating System: KDE neon 6.2 KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.0 KDE Frameworks Version: 6.10.0 Qt Version: 6.8.2 Kernel Version: 6.11.0-17-generic (64-bit) Graphics Platform: Wayland Processors: 12 × AMD Ryzen 5 7530U with Radeon Graphics Memory: 29.2 GiB of RAM Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon Graphics Manufacturer: LENOVO Product Name: 21KK System Version: ThinkBook 16 G6 ABP ADDITIONAL INFORMATION The speaker appeared after I updated KDE from 6.2 to 6.3. No idea if this has any effect on the issue
Created attachment 178192 [details] task bar speaker icon
To make sure I triage this correctly. The audio icon is working correctly, you just don't like it?
(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #2) > To make sure I triage this correctly. The audio icon is working correctly, > you just don't like it? - The audio icon button >function< (audio on/off) works correctly - I don't need/want the icon as I often end up muting the whole window why clicking to select it
Created attachment 178199 [details] Icons-Only toolbar settings The settings simply do not show the option to turn off the speaker (unlike it is said in the provided help pages)
*** Bug 499899 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 499949 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to BOF from comment #3) > - I don't need/want the icon as I often end up muting the whole window why > clicking to select it FWIW, you can turn off the clickability of the icon using the "Use audio indicators to mute tasks" option. Then the icon will be purely informative, and clicking it will never mute the window. ---- Someone on Matrix pointed out that the current way of handling this isn't a good for for people using lots of web applications with individual task bar entries, as they'll all be counted as the same process and all show the icon whether they're playing audio or not. On the other hand, having two options here also feels bad.
This is indeed very frustrating. Disabling the icon has been a feature that definitely helped a lot. I work mainly in PWAs for Teams, Outlook, spotify etc. The result is that I have a taskbar full of audio icons whenever I listen to music.
Created attachment 178283 [details] task bar many speaker icons (In reply to cwo from comment #7) > FWIW, you can turn off the clickability of the icon using the "Use audio indicators to mute tasks" option. > Then the icon will be purely informative, and clicking it will never mute the window. 1a) Yes, I noticed that when I checked if maybe the setting got renamed or moved (I tried to enable/disable every setting to ensure this is not possible in any other/new way) 1b) What is the use of this icon if it doesn't do anything more or better than the applications tab in the audio settings in the task bar (speaker symbol) 2) The speaker icon is displayed on all windows even only one plays audio (see attached image) (Fun fact: Here there was no audio playing and I have no idea why the speaker symbol was even displayed)
If I play an audio file from the file manager, both the file manager and the media player get the icon.
(In reply to BOF from comment #9) > 1a) Yes, I noticed that when I checked if maybe the setting got renamed or > moved (I tried to enable/disable every setting to ensure this is not > possible in any other/new way) That's good, but then why did you write about wanting to avoid accidentally muting the stream when that's still perfectly possible? Seems irrelevant to the issue. > 1b) What is the use of this icon if it doesn't do anything more or better > than the applications tab in the audio settings in the task bar (speaker > symbol) That you don't need to click the applications tab in the audio settings to see it. People may not be aware that it exists in the first place. Many browsers also display an audio symbol on tabs if there's sound playing there, so it's not something unfamiliar. > 2) The speaker icon is displayed on all windows even only one plays audio > (see attached image Yes, that is an unfortunate technical limitation. It might still help you narrow down which window is causing the sound, and it does work properly with where multiple windows don't share the same process. I have no stake in this decision, was not involved with making it, and don't really care much either way. The only resolution I'd be a little unhappy with was having two options in the task manager settings for this, because there are already a lot and we want to keep some room for future development.
This is indeed odd behavior especially when you have multiple apps open eg. Slack, Zoom, Element, Audacious... You end up with ugly icons stuck in the taskbar. The previous behavior was way better. There should be an option to completely disable this speaker icon.
If I may ask, what was the reasoning behind removing the option to disable the "playing audio" icon? Allegedly this is intended behavior, but I haven't been able to find any explicit mention of it in the full 6.3 changelog, nor has any link to the merge request that implemented this been provided in this thread or in either of the issues closed as duplicates.
(In reply to mith3113 from comment #13) > has any link to the merge request that implemented this been provided in > this thread or in either of the issues closed as duplicates. The MR is not hard to find; Gitlab search isn't great but on MRs it works very well. You can see the discussion here: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/merge_requests/2590
The implementation for showing the icon seems to be whether the application has indicated its intent to play audio, not whether it's actually producing audio. Here are some situations I've noticed over the last few days: (1) Launch Kdenlive and wait a few seconds. The audio icon shows in the panel even when nothing's happening. (2) I view my home security cameras in Firefox in a separate profile. There's no actual audio stream in the videos, and Firefox's audio indicator icon in the tab correctly doesn't show, but the panel thinks there is. (3) We use Outlook Online at work, which I always have open in a Firefox tab. Sometimes when I get an email, I'll get the audible notification along with the panel icon, but that panel icon won't always go away until I close or reload the tab. (4) The icon appears on every instance of an application in the panel, even if only one window is playing audio. Firefox knows whether the tab is really playing audio and only shows its icon indicator when accurate, but presumably Plasma can't know that, and incorrectly assumes audio is playing when it thinks the application could be sending audio. I don't disagree with the original MR's intent of adding an option to make the indicator read only, but I find it distracting when my panel tells me an application is playing audio when it really isn't. The heuristic approach Plasma uses is too simple. It may technically be correct [that the icon's application has an open audio stream], and may even be the best approach currently available, but it's prone to false positives and hurts the user experience; it's communicating something to the user that's misleading. In my opinion, the option to hide the audio indicator in the panel should be restored, until, at the very least, Plasma can accurately know which "icon" the audio is coming from (and whether there really is audio).
Created attachment 178335 [details] Firefox plays audio alert from Outlook Online. Firefox tab audio indicator goes away once audio stops. Plasma panel audio indicator remains indefinitely.
Please bring back the option to the disable this indicator again like it was possible in prior versions of Plasma. I really have no use for it and on top of that it is also rather buggy for flatpak / chromium / electron based applications and in Firefox (showing for the wrong applications / on all tabs, etc.). Will create bug report later.
I think that the icon provides superfluous functionality, and it's better absent.
Please bring back the ability to disable completely the icon.
This is superfluous at best. But also in the previous version I had the task audio icon turned off and this reverted it, making me think something went wrong with the update. Please restore the previous behavior.
Please bring it back, it is ugly and I disabled it at first after each switch to icon-only-taskbar
A good idea may be making a standard of showcasing any UI change in video along with merge requests.
Please let us remove the sound indicator again. I don't want this ugly thing on my icons. Not once was I confused where my audio comes from.
Hi everybody, author of 2590 here. First of all, apologies for all the inconvenience caused by my code! Like so many of you, I too have no use for the overlay audio icon. i found it just getting in the way. My original intent was to have tooltip volume controls always displayed. This was tied to the 'Mark applications that play audio' setting. Initial code was a one line change that allowed volume controls to always be displayed, so that you could remove the overlay icon and still have that nifty little volume slider over applications tooltips. David Edmundson reacted to the implications of decoupling this feature from the setting and pinged the VDG (Visual Design Group). Valuable insights was collected and then iterations were made all while trying to account for all the varied needs of users. These changes didn't account for your wants: to not have the indicator displayed at all! To preface this, let me just say I have no authority to undo the change, I'm just a contributor and I chose to contribute because I wasn't happy with the way it was: all or nothing with 'Mark applications that play audio' setting. That said, there are several ways this issue can be resolved: 1. we revert 2590 2. we revert 2590 but keep tooltip volume controls always on 3. we add another setting which controls if the audio indicator is visible 4. we do nothing The way I see it: 1) is a straight downgrade in terms of usability 2) you can turn off the indicator back AND also have volume controls in tooltips (see Comment 15 for possible drawbacks) 3) adds to feature bloat and makes future code maintenance more difficult but keeps users happy (see Comment 11) 4) this causes more user frustration Of particular value in this bug report are the findings of Steve Therrien. The system for detection of which application is playing audio is indeed simplistic and flawed and in the long run, this is where I would like to see development attention turned to. For the most part, it's not Plasma's fault, it seems there doesn't exist a standardized interface in the linux world for this kind of interaction between a task manager and running applications. Perhaps this issue could spark a creation of such a standardized interface but I wouldn't hold my breath for the likes of Mozilla to adopt it quickly. I'm changing the status of this bug to confirmed. This has been bugging me (pun intended) ever since the PR got merged. Now let's figure out what to do about it!
Hello, pmargeti34. Thanks for your comment. As I see it, the focus of this bug report is not related to how the detection of applications playing audio happens. I am okay in regards to waiting improvements for that, but I would suggest a separate issue to discuss the technical details of that. What matters more here is the removal of the icon (getting previous behavior back). What I believe that should be done is what you called feature bloat. KDE has many settings; adding a few more won't hurt. To cover all possible cases, I suggest the following (interpret ellipsis as a sub-option): [ ] Mark applications that are playing audio with audio indicators ... [ ] Use audio indicators to mute tasks [ ] Show volume control in window previews when hovering over tasks This way, the first option disables the icon entirely, and its sub-option allows for the toggle of the current behavior. If the main option is disabled, the sub-option is also disabled. The second option controls the visibility of the volume bar in window previews. By default, all three options would be enabled. This solves the main issue of this bug report and lets other people customize to their needs. ----------------- However, I also see a negative point: allowing to control the visibility of the volume control bar in window previews should be coupled with the other option(s). I think that if the audio indicator doesn't show in apps in the task manager, then neither should the volume control bar. In that regard, I would suggest the following options: [ ] Mark applications that are playing audio with audio indicators and show a volume control bar for small window previews ... [ ] Use audio indicators to mute tasks This way, either the audio indicator and the volume control bar don't show at all; you have both or you have none. But, if they're visible, the user has an option to toggle the audio indicators toggle-mute feature in the task manager app icon (the mute feature in the window preview would still function independently of the sub-option preference). I think that the volume control bar shouldn't be shown if the user has also choose to hide the audio indicator first. I prefer this latter way of doing the new options, but suggestions are welcome. Thanks!
Thanks EpicTux for trying to improve this. What I see is that if an application plays audio, most likely it has already its own volume control. Hence having an indicator doesn't deliver any extra control. The only thing that it does is creating a standard way to present the controls. But that way, when looked in practice, is rather inconvenient. It clutters the interface way too much, and it doesn't show properly which applications are playing audio. My opinion is that options shall exist when a non negligible amount of users find it useful, and the implementation is consistent. Here I suspect it is neither. The root cause of this issue is that, while the idea sounded interesting, you have to SEE with your own eyes what the result is telling you. Direct observation of the design is more important than any process or idea you can have. Also don't validate an user interface idea with text only. The rest of people need to see a demo.
*** Bug 500111 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Please remove this eyesore of an icon. It makes 0 sense to disable the ability of hiding the icon. Matter of fact, prior to 6.3 release, not only did the icon hide, but also did the slider indicator of volume, which appeared when hovering on a task bar entry. There were many times where I accidentally lowered an app's volume when switching between windows with a mouse. Please bring back old functionality.
*** Bug 500158 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Please add an option to remove the volume icon. I don't want to see it. It takes up space on apps. Also please add an option to remove the volume bar options when hovering over apps.
confirming the problem. Please bring back the option to hide the playback indicator
The setting to display the audio Icon was in previous versions of Plasma and has now been removed. It seems strange to remove it as displaying an audio icon over the program icon ruins the desktop aesthetic (very important :) and many users do not need visual feedback on what application is playing audio.
People seem to be wanting to remove the icon to work around these bugs: Bug 472539 - audio icon inappropriately shown for all Chromium/Electron apps when one is playing audio Bug 463356 - audio icon inappropriately shown for all Flatpak apps when one is playing audio Bug 375943 - audio icon inappropriately shown for all windows of single-PID-multi-window app when only one is playing audio I suspect if we manage to fix all of those, the demand for being able to hide the audio icon entirely will drop to a low level. Possibly not to zero, but at least to a lower level than right now.
At least that isn't the case for me. I want to hide the icon because it doesn't deliver any usefulness to me.
I would also prefer to be able to disable it again, even if you manage to fix all the issues with it.
We always could disable that feature of showing a speaker icon on top of our application icons. Fixing new bugs introduced with this forced icon doesn't solve the main issue. People do not want to see the icon. It is hard to judge from this bug tracker what people want, but I'm pretty sure by forcing this icon to be displayed you will make a LOT of people unhappy that's a given. Personally I find it ugly and useless. I don't want to have an icon on top of my applications icons, and I don't want the DE to tell me which applications make sound that is really unneeded.
Hello, Nate. Thanks for your comment. Like other many users, I would also like to be able to hide the icon again, even if the issues are fixed. Many thanks.
I agree that fixing those long-standing bugs would help ease the demand for the hiding the icon, but I still find it adds visual noise to my workspace, and would prefer to turn it off. The bugs mentioned in #15 and #33 aside, I find it distracting when my peripheral vision catches the audio icon appearing and disappearing because some application momentarily played a sound that, either my ears have already hard, or I didn't care about in the first place because I'd turned my speakers off so as to not be bothered by random sounds. If bug-free indicators showing each application's CPU/memory usage and network traffic were suddenly forced on, people would understandably want the option to turn them off; that's not the job of the icon panel, and Plasma already comes with a tool to view all that process information, the System Monitor. Likewise, if I ever find myself in a situation where I need to mute an application or figure out which application it's coming from, the audio applet is always just a click away.
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #33) > People seem to be wanting to remove the icon to work around these bugs: > > Bug 472539 - audio icon inappropriately shown for all Chromium/Electron apps > when one is playing audio > > Bug 463356 - audio icon inappropriately shown for all Flatpak apps when one > is playing audio > > Bug 375943 - audio icon inappropriately shown for all windows of > single-PID-multi-window app when only one is playing audio > > I suspect if we manage to fix all of those, the demand for being able to > hide the audio icon entirely will drop to a low level. Possibly not to zero, > but at least to a lower level than right now. Not once, in my time using Plasma, did I know about these bugs, because I automatically turn off the icons due to the visual clutter they provide, especially with how many applications are considered "playing audio". I do however, notice when they show up, after I specifically turned them off.
*** Bug 500556 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Just wanted to chime in to agree with other posters here that I want an option to turn the indicators off completely. I'm not very interested in the feature at all, and I really dislike the extra visual clutter. I think if people really like that feature, it should be an option. I understand the argument that KDE has a lot of options, but there's really not very many for the task manager specifically. The Appearance page has plenty of blank space. Adding a couple of checkbox options for this doesn't increase clutter in a negative way at all IMO because the options are not trivial - i.e. some people really want them and some really don't. For example: if I had the option to, I would leave the tooltip volume control but remove the indicator, but I'd definitely take the old behavior over the current behavior. Options make perfect sense for this. Even if the bugs were fixed and the indicator was only shown when relevant, I would still much prefer to disable it.
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/merge_requests/2849
+1 for being able to hide this icon completely again. I have zero use for it and it is ugly. I can understand other people find it useful but you can't just remove the option to hide the icon in my opinion. Apart from that, my panel size is 28 and the volume icon is really too small to click in a user friendly manner. Muting it would be more convenient through a right click menu or the application preview that also shows the volume bar.
Maybe there could be a better subtler way than showing an icon. For example by highlighting one of the corners.
I would also like to see the option of hiding the icon return, as I do not have a use for it. I think the interface @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/merge_requests/2849 is a good compromise. KDE having a lot of options is part of its strength, and is why I and so many others love it.
+1 I also just want the speaker icon gone. I don't want it on my task bar, please.
*** Bug 499817 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
+1 to options that can hide all indicators, whether it's the current speaker icon or replacements suggested here. I appreciate the intention but I know which applications are playing sounds, so I would like to be trusted to completely disable it.
Git commit 7f076f0f372c4c0ece71f5a8caad2af471860c9c by Oliver Beard. Committed on 27/02/2025 at 01:41. Pushed by olib into branch 'master'. applets/taskmanager: Add option for tooltip volume and media controls This was previously also disabled by the setting that would hide audio indicators on tasks. This commit re-introduces this feature, but with a specific option that will also disable the media controls. M +4 -0 applets/taskmanager/package/contents/config/main.xml M +9 -0 applets/taskmanager/package/contents/ui/ConfigAppearance.qml M +1 -0 applets/taskmanager/package/contents/ui/Task.qml M +4 -1 applets/taskmanager/package/contents/ui/ToolTipInstance.qml https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/commit/7f076f0f372c4c0ece71f5a8caad2af471860c9c
Git commit e5bb0890ff71ac68cc0670049d32e70587ea2afb by Oliver Beard. Committed on 27/02/2025 at 01:41. Pushed by olib into branch 'master'. applets/taskmanager: Reintroduce ability to disable audio indicator We previously removed it because we had assumed that it would always be useful to indicate audio playback, and instead replaced it with an option to disable it as an interactive mute button. User demand has shown this is not the case, with many people preferring a clean indicator-less aesthetic. This commit reintroduces an option to disable the indicator altogether, with a subordinate option to toggle its interactivity. By default, both options are enabled. M +4 -0 applets/taskmanager/package/contents/config/main.xml M +13 -2 applets/taskmanager/package/contents/ui/ConfigAppearance.qml M +2 -2 applets/taskmanager/package/contents/ui/Task.qml https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/commit/e5bb0890ff71ac68cc0670049d32e70587ea2afb
*** Bug 500814 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***