electron: tray displayBalloon does not work well

Electron version: after 1.1.2
Operating system: Windows

It works well up to version 1.1.1. Since version 1.1.2 displayBalloon does not work well. Especially when multiple asynchronous operations are made at the same time displayBalloon often ignored.

        setInterval(function(){
            tray.displayBalloon({
                title:'hello',
                content:'world'
            });    
        },3000);

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 8 years ago
Reactions: 3
Comments: 22 (9 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

Use the PNG file instead of ICO for the system tray icon. Apparently there is some weirdness/bugs with using .ico files in electron, so we should be using the pngs from now on. See this issue: https... — committed to ShieldBattery/ShieldBattery by 2Pacalypse- 7 years ago
Use the PNG file instead of ICO for the system tray icon. (#267) Apparently there is some weirdness/bugs with using .ico files in electron, so we should be using the pngs from now on. See this is... — committed to ShieldBattery/ShieldBattery by 2Pacalypse- 7 years ago

Most upvoted comments

Given that there exist workarounds for this, and that this isn’t currently on our roadmap, i’m going to go ahead and label this a wontfix. However, should someone determine a workable solution we would be very open to accepting a PR!

codebytere on Sep 23, 2018

Same to me.

I added icon in displayBalloon as @insideGen said and it works. Without icon, tray message cannot be displayed.

redplane on Jun 29, 2018

Electron version: 1.8.1
Operating system: Windows 10 (64 bits)

The following code works correctly: when a click event is detected, the balloon appears.

appTray.on("click", function (event, bounds) {
  appTray.displayBalloon({
    title: "Tray icon",
    content: "Click event"
  });
});

The following code works incorrectly: when an update event is detected, log.info() works but appTray.displayBalloon() doesn’t.

autoUpdater.on("update-available", function (info) {
  log.info("update-available", info);
  appTray.displayBalloon({
    title: "Update",
    content: "Available"
  });
});

If I add the icon property inside the balloon object, it’s work fine. But the icon needs to be a .png format, not .ico.

autoUpdater.on("update-available", function (info) {
  log.info("update-available", info);
  appTray.displayBalloon({
    icon: path.join(__dirname, "./appIcon.png"),
    title: "Update",
    content: "Available"
  });
});

insideGen on Nov 17, 2017

I’m on electron 1.8.1 and tray balloon doesnt work from async calls. tried setting the icon to png/ico but no balloon.

GorvGoyl on Nov 14, 2017

I can confirm that this still does not function when a .ico file is used for the icon. If I omit that, the balloon works and actually uses the application’s icon, albeit a horrendously pixelated version of it. Using Windows 10.

kczx3 on Jun 20, 2017

For me changing my .ico files to .png did not work, however, calling setImage immediately before displayBalloon does…

Update: I take it back - that only worked once so it is probably unrelated…

Apteryx0 on Apr 25, 2017

Confirmed this in Electron 1.3.5 and Windows 10 64-bit ver 1607. Setting the tray icon to an .ico renders the app unable to display notifications, while setting it to a .png renders the first notification unable to display until a second one is received.

I made the mistake of setting my app icon a .png file while consequent displayBalloons calls were using an .ico file. Setting them all to use .png fixed notifications for me. appIcon = new Tray(__dirname + '/images/icon.png'); appIcon.displayBalloon({ icon: __dirname + '/images/icon.png', title: data.title, content: data.message, });

If it’s any help, I initialized my Tray instance during the app ready event, and displayed tray balloons when an event from my renderer process was received by ipcMain.

A thing to note is that even as the balloon icon was set, somehow notifications aren’t consistently provided an icon:

ghost on Oct 3, 2016

I tested this module and seems works well

https://github.com/hankbao/electron-notify

so for these who want to upgrade to the latest electron version, you may use this instead of displayBalloon

wangxiexe on Aug 13, 2016

Hmm I don’t know why but I can not reproduce this on either Windows 10 or 8.1.

zcbenz on Jul 2, 2016