Left/right click on indicator icon broken

[SwooshyCueb]

Expected behaviour

Left clicking indicator icon performs left click action on indicator icon.
Right clicking indicator icon performs right click action on indicator icon.

Actual behaviour

Left clicking indicator icon performs right click action on indicator icon.
Right clicking indicator icon opens the context menu for the indicator applet.
This breaks programs like flameshot which worked fine in the old gtk2 version of mate-panel/mate-indicator-applet.

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

Right or left click on an indicator icon.

MATE general version

1.20

Package version

mate-indicator-applet 1.20.0-1
mate-panel 1.20.1-3ubuntu1

Linux Distribution

Ubuntu MATE 18.04

[selectiveduplicate]

Can't reproduce the problem; everything's fine here!

[cristian64]

@SwooshyCueb This behaviour change is certainly the most annoying issue I have seen in Ubuntu MATE 18.04.

[derex]

Same problem for me on ubuntu 18.04lts with mate: 1.20.1, indicator-applet: 1.20. Any solutions ?

[goffyara]

+1. it's annoying. Terribly unusual.

[nclm]

Yes I came here for reporting that issue (after posting it mistakenly on mate-desktop/mate-panel#976), this time with QJoyPad, an app that only works from the tray area.

In this application, left clicking is meant to perform the main action (setting up a game controller), while right clicking allow you to switch in between different presets.

The app is unusable on MATE: the right-click menu appears on left click, the applet menu on right click, and the main action is simply not accessible.

[vkareh]

Actual behaviour

Left clicking indicator icon performs right click action on indicator icon.
Right clicking indicator icon opens the context menu for the indicator applet.

This seems like the expected behavior to me. I don't know of any applet that behaves differently than this: right click opens context menu for the applet, left click executes the applet's primary action.

Why is everyone reporting here that this one applet should behave opposite from every other applet? What am I missing?

[SwooshyCueb]

Actual behaviour

Left clicking indicator icon performs right click action on indicator icon.
Right clicking indicator icon opens the context menu for the indicator applet.

This seems like the expected behavior to me. I don't know of any applet that behaves differently than this: right click opens context menu for the applet, left click executes the applet's primary action.

Why is everyone reporting here that this one applet should behave opposite from every other applet? What am I missing?

Because indicator icons have always had both a right-click and left-click action, and it is a breaking change to remove the ability for an indicator icon to use both of these actions.

I think the window switcher applet behaves similarly (though it's been a while since I've used mate-panel so it might've changed at some point). Right clicking on a window title in the applet does not open the context menu for the indicator, but the context menu for the window, so that you can close, minimize, etc.

[fukawi2]

Reporting in with the same problem as OP - I can't use Flameshot to take screenshots due to left-click opening Flameshot's right-click menu, and right-click opening indicator app menu.

It works as expected on my Arch desktop with 1.22.1, but on Ubuntu 18.04.3 with 1.20.1 it's broken - so not sure if this has been fixed, or if this is perhaps an Ubuntu Mate bug?

[zenden2k]

Have the same issue on Ubuntu 18.04.3 and Mate 1.20.1
Upgrading to Mate 1.22.1 did not solve this problem.

[chexmo]

Same happens in Ubuntu MATE 19.10
This is one of the little few things i don't like about MATE right now.

[slcpunk]

I also wish there was a workaround for this. If someone reading doesn't understand, here's another example. BirdTray is an email indicator. The expected behavior ( like the items in the dock ) is that a left click will raise/lower (hide/show) the Thunderbird window. The right click would bring up the context menu. As others describe, instead the left click brings up the context menu and a right click brings up the App Indicator menu instead. I realize why - otherwise it would be hard to see the app indicator menu - but I think the solution is to have the click work that way on the "handle" of the add indicator applet. Note that Mate Dock handles this correctly ( and even has an option to change it ) passing through the left clicks properly.