Skip to main content
  1. Blog
  2. Article

Matthew Paul Thomas
on 23 April 2010

Refining the battery status menu


As I explained on Wednesday, we’re replacing Ubuntu’s notification area with a consistent set of menus. As part of that transition, we need to adapt system components that have previously been using the notification area.

One of the simplest of these belongs to Gnome Power Manager, and displays the charge status for the batteries in devices connected to your computer — the computer itself, any wireless mouse, phone, and so on.

In Ubuntu 10.04, Gnome Power Manager has already been patched to use a custom status menu (“application indicator”). So, probably, not much will change when it shuffles over to the system area. But we’re still interested in feedback on the design and any improvements we can make.

Once you’ve checked out the full battery status menu specification, we’d be glad to have your comments either here or on the Ayatana mailing list.

Related posts


Nina Rojc
16 June 2026

Template: Streamlining open source design contributions

Design Ubuntu tech blog

As designers working at Canonical, we’re always thinking about open source. We believe that encouraging more designers to contribute to open source  benefits everyone, from the project maintainers to the end users themselves.   In the 2025 edition of FOSSBackstage conference, we presented our research findings on  why designers don’t get ...


Miguel Divo
22 May 2026

Decoding design: How design and engineering thrive together in open source

Design Ubuntu tech blog

Open source thrives on engineering-driven processes. Fast feedback loops, terminal tools, Git workflows: they’re the lifeblood of how we build software in the open. But for software to truly excel, we need to create user experiences that empower people to use them. I wanted to bring this conversation into the spotlight as part of Canonica ...


Johann Wolf
27 April 2026

Why web engineering is great

Ubuntu Ubuntu tech blog

Hi, I’m Johann! I’m an engineering manager in Canonical’s web team. For the larger part of my 15 years of work experience as engineer, I’ve been working in web development. Like many software engineers, one of my first software development experiences started with creating my own web page. Since that time almost 25 years ago, ...