Gnome Tray Services – Quickly Start/Stop Services From Ubuntu System Tray

You can make the configuration of the services(e.g disable services) from System > Administration > Services in Ubuntu, but if you need to start or stop any particular service then you need to run commands from terminal. Gnome Tray Services application lets you manage services from your system tray. Once installed, it gets launched in the system tray and you can click its icon to start and stop the service you want. It is only supported for Ubuntu and Debian. Installation is a bit tricky, but follow our steps and it will be up in no time.

First of all, lets resolve its dependencies, Python and Python-gtk2 must be pre-installed in your system. You can install both by running the following commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get install python
sudo apt-get install python-gtk2

Once installation of above mentioned packages is complete, download Gnome Tray Service from its official site.

Extract the downloaded folder by double clicking it, now the rest of the work is from the command line. Open the terminal and go to the extracted folder by typing the following command.

cd tray_services

Run the following command to create launcher shortcut for it.

cp tray_services.py /usr/local/bin/

Thats all, you will be able to see it located in the system tray now. Click it and you will see list of services, you can start or stop any particular service by checking or unchecking it respectively.

Enjoy!