[HOWTO] Make Mailspring running in the background without having to enable the system tray icon

[archerallstars]

I don’t know why, but I’m having an issue with the system tray icon always showing as a generic one in GNOME 48. It’s this issue:

Tray icon now showing properly after update to 1.13

Description The tray icon of Mailspring is not showing properly after the update to 1.13. Instead of displaying a mail icon with different colors depending on the unread message status, it is currently displaying 3 dots (image below). Expected Behavior The correct display of the tray icon. Screenshots [Screenshot from 2023-11-23 10-47-31] Setup OS and Version: ArchLinux (rolling version) Installation Method: AUR package using yay Mailspring Version: 1.13.1

So, I disabled it completely, as it’s bugging me so much. But then, it wouldn’t run in the background on closing. Here’s how I work around it.

Create a user systemd service file at ~/.config/systemd/user/mailspring.service:

[Unit]
Description=Mailspring in the background
RequiresMountsFor=/run/user/1000/containers

[Service]
Type=exec
ExecStart=/usr/bin/distrobox-enter  -n dev-dbx  --   mailspring --background
Restart=always
RestartSec=15
TimeoutStopSec=30

This will always start Mailspring in the background again in 15 secs after you close it.

Replace the ExecStart= value to match the one in your desktop file, plus --background at the end.

Remove RequiresMountsFor=/run/user/1000/containers if you don’t install Mailspring in the container.

Here’s a timer file ~/.config/systemd/user/mailspring.timer to make it runs automatically on startup:

[Unit]
Description=Start Mailspring service with some delay.

[Timer]
OnStartupSec=20
RandomizedDelaySec=10
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

Then, enable the timer:

systemctl --user daemon-reload && systemctl --user enable mailspring.timer

Note, if you enable the timer, you don’t have to enable the service, as the service (Mailspring in the background) would be triggered by the timer.