Thursday, April 30, 2009

how to change ktimetracker systray icon

My recent switch from gnome to fluxbox has been a happy improvement save one small detail. I had really gotten used to using the gnome-panel applets but I didn't want to muddy up fluxbox with the gnome-panel (even though you can run it as a subset). Long story short I found there was no good way to run gnome-panel applets without running gnome-panel and I started to look for new applications to fill the void.

Enter ktimetracker. ktimetracker is a handy kde application that can be run standalone. It offers a simple way to create tasks and track time against them. As an added bonus, the system tray icon for ktimetracker animates a clock moving when ktimetracker is tracking time against a task. The only downside is that the icon was small and it was hard to tell when it was animated and when it was stopped.

I found the icons used in the system tray as a bunch of xpms (active-icon-*.xpm) in /usr/share/kde4/apps/ktimetracker/pics . I figured if I changed the icons and restarted ktimetracker I'd be able to see the new system tray icon, but I was only partially right.

I replaced the icons and the system tray didn't change until I had rebooted the system a few time. I still have no idea why it switched (or why it didn't switch immediately) but at least I know where I can go to customize it.

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