System Tray icon works very different than it does in PySimpleGUI

[johnkmayo]

I'm trying to convert a project from PySimpleGui to FreeSimpleGUI before my hobbyist license ends. The project is a system tray app. FreeSimplyGUI doesn't put the icon/app into the system tray but has a floating icon instead. How do I get the icon into the system tray so the app works the same way it did in FreeSimplyGUI?

[spyoungtech]

Thanks for opening this issue. I'm not familiar with the way that newer licensed versions of PySimpleGUI do this, but FreeSimpleGUI should have the same behavior as PySimpleGUI4, as it was before it was re-licenced.

I think I understand the behavior you're observing and the behavior you're expecting, but it would be helpful if you could provide the minimal reproducible code example(s) so I can reproduce the behavior(s) on my end and verify some additional details about this issue.

Without a reproducible example and common understanding of the code at issue, it's hard for me to say whether this is a bug-fix, improvement, or new feature needed in FreeSimpleGUI or maybe something else. Having that will really help me move this issue forward.

Thanks again for raising the issue

[johnkmayo]

Here is code to reproduce the problem:

from datetime import datetime
import time
import os
import sys

# import PySimpleGUIQt as sg
import FreeSimpleGUI as sg

APP_NAME = 'SystemTrayApp'
ICON_NAME = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'SystemTrayApp_icon_RedX.png')
print(ICON_NAME)

MENU_OPTION_DO_SOMETHING = 'Do &Something'
MENU_OPTION_DO_SOMETHING_ELSE = 'Do Something &Else'

menu_def = ['BLANK', [MENU_OPTION_DO_SOMETHING, 
                      MENU_OPTION_DO_SOMETHING_ELSE, 
                      'E&xit']]

tray = sg.SystemTray(menu=menu_def, filename=ICON_NAME)
automation = True


def do_something():
    print(datetime.now(), 'Starting do_something')
    print(datetime.now(), 'Finished do_something')


def do_something_else():
    print(datetime.now(), 'Starting do_something_else')
    print(datetime.now(), 'Finished do_something_else')


def menu_option_do_something():
    do_something()


def menu_option_do_something_else():
    do_something_else()


def event_loop():
    print(datetime.now(), 'SystemTrayApp has started...')

    action = {
        MENU_OPTION_DO_SOMETHING: menu_option_do_something,
        MENU_OPTION_DO_SOMETHING_ELSE: menu_option_do_something_else
    }

    while True:  # The event loop
        menu_item = tray.Read(timeout=10)
        if menu_item != '__TIMEOUT__':
            print(datetime.now(), menu_item)
            if menu_item == 'Exit':
                break
            else:
                try:
                    command_action = action[menu_item]
                except KeyError:
                    if menu_item not in('__TIMEOUT__', '__ACTIVATED__', '__MESSAGE_CLICKED__'):
                        sg.Popup(f'Unimplemented menu option:{menu_item}')
    print(datetime.now(), 'SystemTrayApp stopping...')


if __name__ == "__main__":
    event_loop()

[johnkmayo]

Here is what it looks like for me on Windows 11 using PySimpleGUIQt :

Here is what it looks like for me on Windows 11 using FreeSimpleGUI:

With FreeSimpleGUI, the icon can be moved around while in PySimpleGUIQt it was in the system tray.

[johnkmayo]

And thanks for creating FreeSimpleGUI. I just found out PySimpleGUI is defunct and my hobbyist license for it runs out in a few days.

[spyoungtech]

Ah. I think this is actually a simple fix. FreeSimpleGUI is the tkinter version, which has this system tray behavior. You probably want FreeSimpleGUIQt, which is the equivalent of PySimpleGUIQt (from the point before it was re-licensed).

Just make sure you install the FreeSimpleGUIQt package pip install FreeSimpleGUIQt and make this adjustment

- import FreeSimpleGUI as sg
+ import FreeSimpleGUIQt as sg

Then the system tray should appear as you expect:

[johnkmayo]

That does look like a super easy fix. Unfortunately, I've managed to get something wrong:

pip install FreeSimpleGUIQt
Collecting FreeSimpleGUIQt
Using cached FreeSimpleGUIQt-1.0.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (15 kB)
INFO: pip is looking at multiple versions of freesimpleguiqt to determine which version is compatible with other requirements. This could take a while.
ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pyside2 (from freesimpleguiqt) (from versions: none)
ERROR: No matching distribution found for pyside2

I think I had to install pyside6 on this system to get PySimpleGUIQt working since I couldn't figure out getting pyside2 installed.

[spyoungtech]

Yeah, it seems like PySide2 requires python<3.11 -- as it stands right now, FreeSimpleGUIQt depends specifically on PySide2. I'm not sure what it would take to support PySide6, but I can look into it or other possible workarounds. For now, your best option would probably be to use Python3.10 if you can

[spyoungtech]

At first glance, it seems like porting to PySide6 might not be so hard. The code I have in #57 seems to work for your application.

[johnkmayo]

Switching to Python 3.10 works. If/when you get it working in Python 3.13, please let me know.

Thanks for the quick replies on this. Keep up the great work!

[spyoungtech]

@johnkmayo this should now be released in the latest version. Feel free to give it a shot and let me know if it works for you.

[johnkmayo]

Thank worked. Thanks for the quick fix!