Viber icon in Ubuntu 13.04, 13.10 and 14.04

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When it comes to desktop<->mobile chat and calls, there is not that many choices as it is somewhat dictated by what your counterparts are capable or willing to use. Therefore, I’m happy that Viber came up with a desktop client for Linux. Unfortunately, under Ubuntu (13.04, 13.10 and 14.04) the program displays an annoying icon at the top left corner of the screen which interferes with the closing icon of most of the other programs. Not that you cannot close a program with a keyboard shortcut instead but it’s still annoying that something is obviously in a place where it’s not supposed to be. There is a cure though.

New fix (as of November 2014, tested in Ubuntu 14.04)

Use viberwrapper-indicator by karas84. You can install it conveniently using Web Upd8’ PPA. It’s a much better solution than the previous one.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install viberwrapper-indicator

Then instead of starting Viber directly, run Viber Indicator.

NOTE: If you haven’t activated your number in Viber yet, you might need to do so by running Viber directly, otherwise it might self-terminate just after start. Only after you have the number activated you can start running Viber Indicator instead.

You can install a patched version of the Unity desktop by Jason Donahue:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:timekiller/unity-systrayfix
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Then, restart Unity by pressing ALT + F2 and entering “unity” or by logging out. In case something is not right, you can revert back to the default Unity package:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:timekiller/unity-systrayfix

Then, restart Unity or log out and log back in.

Credit

The solution above comes from an article by Alin Andrei “How To Whitelist Systray Apps In Ubuntu 14.04, 13.10 Or 13.04 (w/ Unity)”. I’m re-posting the solution because his article deals with the general systray problem in Unity and many people might not realize that it solves the problem they’ve encountered only with the desktop version of Viber.