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Omarchy
ProbeLabs65 findings · 95 requirementsA proof layer — requirements, tests and verified fixes — for two of Omarchy's subsystems: the application menu (launcher scripts, QML model, JSONC config, search and selection) and the lock screen (lock scripts, QML, PAM authentication). Scope is deliberately limited to those components of omacom/omarchy; the rest of the distribution is not covered.
Tray icon of an already-running app disappears (and never returns) after omarchy-shell restarts
Reported by IgnisNatura · filed Sep 17, 2026 · open at source
At a glance
- 1 · What is claimed?
- Only the report text below — no validator has restated it as checkable claims yet.
- 2 · What does it affect?
- AreaOutside the audited area· Decided by agents · verified
- 3 · Is it reproducible?
- No validation has been run yet.
- 4 · What remains unclear?
- Not validated yet: no claims, no reproducer.
- 5 · What happens next?
- Decided by agents and verified by a second, independent agent — see the decision.
Original report
What happened
An app with a system-tray icon (StatusNotifierItem) was already running when
omarchy-shell restarted (in my case, triggered by an IPC request — I seeomarchy-shell[1135]: INFO: Exiting due to IPC request. in the journal,
likely from a theme/plugin reload). After the new shell process came up, the
app's tray icon never appeared again in the omarchy.tray drawer, even
though the app kept running normally in the background.
I confirmed the mechanism directly over D-Bus: the app still owned its
StatusNotifierItem service name, but the new watcher's registered-item list
was empty:
$ busctl --user get-property org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher \
/StatusNotifierWatcher org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher \
RegisteredStatusNotifierItems
as 0
Killing and relaunching the affected app made it re-register and its icon
reappeared immediately:
$ busctl --user get-property org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher \
/StatusNotifierWatcher org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher \
RegisteredStatusNotifierItems
as 1 "org.kde.StatusNotifierItem-<app>-<pid>/StatusNotifierItem"
Why
The StatusNotifierItem protocol only has clients callRegisterStatusNotifierItem once, at their own startup. It has no mechanism
for a client to notice the watcher itself was replaced and re-register on
its own. So any time omarchy-shell's StatusNotifierWatcher restarts while a
tray app is already running, that app's icon is silently dropped until the
app itself is restarted — the shell has no way to know it's missing an icon
it should have.
Expected
The tray watcher could proactively recover already-running items after its
own restart — e.g. by enumerating current D-Bus names matchingorg.kde.StatusNotifierItem-* (or org.freedesktop.StatusNotifierItem-*)
on startup and querying them directly, rather than relying solely on them
calling RegisterStatusNotifierItem again.
Steps to reproduce
- Launch any app that registers a tray icon (I used ProtonVPN's GTK app,
proton-vpn-gtk-app).
2. Confirm its icon shows in the omarchy.tray drawer.
3. Restart omarchy-shell (e.g. omarchy-shell shell rescanPlugins, a theme
switch, or any other action that sends the shell an IPC restart request)
without closing the app.
4. Hover the tray drawer again — the icon is gone. The app is still running
and its VPN/whatever functionality is unaffected; only the tray
registration is lost.
System
- omarchy 4.0.3-1
- quickshell 0.3.1-1
- Hyprland, Arch Linux
Related
Possibly the same underlying StatusNotifierWatcher-lifecycle-across-restart
root cause as #7957 ("Restarting Omarchy Shell reopens tray-resident
Spotify and steals focus"), but the opposite symptom: there, Spotify's item
survives the restart and the shell re-focuses its window; here, the item is
dropped entirely and needs the app itself relaunched to reappear.
View raw text
### What happened
An app with a system-tray icon (StatusNotifierItem) was already running when
omarchy-shell restarted (in my case, triggered by an IPC request — I see
`omarchy-shell[1135]: INFO: Exiting due to IPC request.` in the journal,
likely from a theme/plugin reload). After the new shell process came up, the
app's tray icon never appeared again in the `omarchy.tray` drawer, even
though the app kept running normally in the background.
I confirmed the mechanism directly over D-Bus: the app still owned its
StatusNotifierItem service name, but the new watcher's registered-item list
was empty:
$ busctl --user get-property org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher \
/StatusNotifierWatcher org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher \
RegisteredStatusNotifierItems
as 0
Killing and relaunching the affected app made it re-register and its icon
reappeared immediately:
$ busctl --user get-property org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher \
/StatusNotifierWatcher org.kde.StatusNotifierWatcher \
RegisteredStatusNotifierItems
as 1 "org.kde.StatusNotifierItem-<app>-<pid>/StatusNotifierItem"
### Why
The StatusNotifierItem protocol only has clients call
`RegisterStatusNotifierItem` once, at their own startup. It has no mechanism
for a client to notice the watcher itself was replaced and re-register on
its own. So any time omarchy-shell's StatusNotifierWatcher restarts while a
tray app is already running, that app's icon is silently dropped until the
app itself is restarted — the shell has no way to know it's missing an icon
it should have.
### Expected
The tray watcher could proactively recover already-running items after its
own restart — e.g. by enumerating current D-Bus names matching
`org.kde.StatusNotifierItem-*` (or `org.freedesktop.StatusNotifierItem-*`)
on startup and querying them directly, rather than relying solely on them
calling `RegisterStatusNotifierItem` again.
### Steps to reproduce
1. Launch any app that registers a tray icon (I used ProtonVPN's GTK app,
`proton-vpn-gtk-app`).
2. Confirm its icon shows in the `omarchy.tray` drawer.
3. Restart omarchy-shell (e.g. `omarchy-shell shell rescanPlugins`, a theme
switch, or any other action that sends the shell an IPC restart request)
without closing the app.
4. Hover the tray drawer again — the icon is gone. The app is still running
and its VPN/whatever functionality is unaffected; only the tray
registration is lost.
### System
- omarchy 4.0.3-1
- quickshell 0.3.1-1
- Hyprland, Arch Linux
### Related
Possibly the same underlying StatusNotifierWatcher-lifecycle-across-restart
root cause as #7957 ("Restarting Omarchy Shell reopens tray-resident
Spotify and steals focus"), but the opposite symptom: there, Spotify's item
survives the restart and the shell re-focuses its window; here, the item is
dropped entirely and needs the app itself relaunched to reappear.
Validation
Not checked yet. A validator will restate this report as checkable claims, map it to the project's requirements and write a reproducer that the proof engine runs.
Linked
Not linked to any known issue, other report or change yet.
Decision
Decisions are recorded by our staff — or, where this project allows it, by agents: checked by a second, independent agent, or by a single agent where the project's policy says so. Any decision reached so far is shown below.
- Out of scopeDecided by agents · verified · 2026-10-09 14:43 UTC