Some tray options are greyed out on Linux

Hi.

I recently installed Networx on my Linux Mint system (22.1 Xia, using Cinnamon desktop).

Everything is working great and I think I will purchase a license, as it's exactly the kind of tool I was looking for to monitor my internet connection.

However, I have a small issue I can't seem to fix.

When I click on the tray icon (left or right click, doesn't matter), it always displays the context menu, which is what I would expect when doing a right-click.

In the settings, there are options to choose what should happen when I make a normal (left-button) click, as well as when I hover the icon. But they seem to be greyed out, so I can't use them.

Could you let me know why this may be happening, and how to solve it? Is this a known limitation on Linux, or on the Cinnamon desktop? Ideally, I would like to open the network chart when clicking the tray icon.



Thanks,
Víctor.

Regarding the tray icon behaviour on Linux, it is indeed a known limitation, and not specific to Cinnamon or Linux Mint, but rather to how modern Linux desktop environments implement system tray functionality.

On Windows, applications can detect and respond to left- and right-clicks on their tray icons separately. However, on Linux, the system tray is implemented differently, especially in modern environments like Cinnamon, GNOME and KDE. Most Linux desktops use a standard called StatusNotifierItem (also known as AppIndicator), which does not provide applications with direct access to mouse click events on the tray icon. Instead, the desktop shell handles the interaction and always shows the context menu, regardless of which mouse button is used.

Because of this design, applications like NetWorx cannot differentiate between left- and right-clicks or define custom behaviour for a normal (left) click. This is why the related settings in NetWorx are greyed out when running on Linux.

As an alternative, you can assign a system-wide hotkey to open the graph at any time, without needing to click the tray icon. This can be configured in the NetWorx settings under Hotkeys, and works regardless of the desktop environment you are using.

Thank you so much for the quick and informative response.

I was reading up on this and I'm surprised to learn that this is indeed the case. It seems like a terrible anti-pattern in Linux to me, as it is not only redundant and tiring to use, but also counter-intuitive for the user who typically never expects a context menu when performing a "primary" action like a left click... but that's not your fault of course.

On the other hand, I think this is the first tray icon that I've found which actually respects this supposed "standard" behavior. The very own Cinnamon applets all have different actions for left and right click, which is ironic. And the other two "external" apps that I have on my system tray, Telegram and InSync, both have distinct behaviors as well: left click opens the apps, right click brings up their context menus as expected.

I assume these apps are probably hacking their way through it by implementing some kind of workaround? Not sure if it would be feasible for you to look into Telegram's implementation (given it's open source), and assess if it could be worth going that route.

Anyway, thanks again for your support, I just purchased a license.

One last thing: do you have any idea of why the NetWorx hotkeys may not be working for me? I've tried all sorts of convoluted combinations to make sure they don't clash with anything else (e.g.: Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Letter), but nothing happens when I execute them.

Thank you for the kind words and for purchasing a licence. It is much appreciated

You are absolutely right about Telegram: it uses Qt, which relies on the older XEmbed system under X11. Since Cinnamon is still based on X11, this allows apps like Telegram to distinguish between left- and right-clicks on the tray icon. NetWorx, on the other hand, currently uses libappindicator, which follows the newer StatusNotifierItem spec. That spec doesn't provide any button-level information. It delegates all interaction handling to the desktop shell, which is why left- and right-clicks behave the same.

Since XEmbed is still well-supported on X11-based desktops like Cinnamon, we'll look into adding it as a fallback in NetWorx to restore proper click handling where possible.

Regarding the hotkeys: they are implemented by reading input directly from the keyboard device (which is, as far as I know, the only way that works consistently across both X11 and Wayland). For this to work, two conditions must be met:

1. Device read permission.
   NetWorx needs permission to read input directly. You can check this by running:
   

     getcap /usr/bin/networx

   If the output includes cap_dac_read_search, then the permission is set correctly.
2. A readable keyboard device.
   Run:
   

     ls -la /dev/input/by-path

   This will list the input devices. If you can share that output with us, we can help verify if the correct device is accessible.

Alternatively, you can simply wait for the upcoming build where we'll add XEmbed as a fallback. It should restore proper left/right-click behaviour on systems like yours.

Wow, that's great news! I'll be waiting for the new version

Regarding the commands you mentioned, I think everything seems to be in order:

$ getcap /usr/bin/networx
/usr/bin/networx cap_dac_read_search,cap_net_raw=ep

$ ls -la /dev/input/by-path
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 180 jul 29 19:11 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 460 jul 29 19:11 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 jul 29 19:11 pci-0000:00:14.0-usb-0:6.2:1.2-event-mouse -> ../event15
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 jul 29 19:11 pci-0000:00:14.0-usb-0:6.2:1.2-mouse -> ../mouse1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 jul 29 19:11 pci-0000:00:14.0-usb-0:7:1.2-event -> ../event9
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 jul 29 19:11 pci-0000:00:14.0-usbv2-0:6.2:1.2-event-mouse -> ../event15
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 jul 29 19:11 pci-0000:00:14.0-usbv2-0:6.2:1.2-mouse -> ../mouse1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 jul 29 19:11 pci-0000:00:14.0-usbv2-0:7:1.2-event -> ../event9
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 jul 29 17:12 platform-i8042-serio-0-event-kbd -> ../event3
...

Just to confirm, other global shortcuts I've defined in Mint's settings do work just fine.

Anyway, if you're planning to implement the left/right click behavior that we mentioned, from my side there's no need to troubleshoot this, as I likely won't be using the shortcuts. Unless of course you want to investigate this as a potential bug, in which case I'm happy to help

Regards,
Víctor

Thanks for confirming. The getcap output and the input device links all look fine. It's a bit of a mystery why the hotkeys aren't working for you, but we can probably leave it there for now. We'll revisit this if anyone else reports a similar issue.

In the meantime, we've implemented a clickable tray icon. It should work on most systems using X11, while on Wayland it will fall back to a tray icon with a popup menu only. Please download the test build and let us know how it goes.

Note that depending on your package manager, the executable files might not be updated automatically as the version number hasn't changed. If you still see the old behaviour, please uninstall the package completely and then install it again. That should ensure the new build is in use.