Ubuntu 16.04 LTS配置i3后调节音量/亮度无指示器显示求助

Hey there, I’ve run into this exact problem when juggling Unity and i3 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS—those missing volume/brightness pop-ups are super annoying, right? Let me share the fixes that got mine working again:

i3 doesn’t automatically fire up Unity’s background services, and that’s usually why the indicators vanish. Here’s how to fix it:

• Open a terminal and run ps aux | grep unity-settings-daemon to check if the service is active. If you don’t see a running instance, start it manually with:

  unity-settings-daemon &
  

• To make this stick every time you launch i3, edit your i3 config file (~/.config/i3/config) and add this line at the bottom:

  exec --no-startup-id unity-settings-daemon
  

• Restart i3 with Mod+Shift+R to apply the change.

If you’ve set custom keybindings for media keys in i3, they might be overriding Unity’s default handler (which is what shows the indicator):

• Open your ~/.config/i3/config file and look for lines with XF86AudioRaiseVolume, XF86AudioLowerVolume, XF86AudioMute, XF86MonBrightnessUp, or XF86MonBrightnessDown.
• If you find any, comment them out by adding a # at the start of the line. This lets Unity’s settings daemon take over and display the pop-up indicators when you press the media keys.

Sometimes packages can get corrupted or go missing during window manager switches. Let’s reinstall the ones that power the indicators:

• Run this command in your terminal:

  sudo apt-get install --reinstall unity-settings-daemon indicator-sound indicator-power
  

• Once the reinstall finishes, log out and back in (or restart your system) to ensure all changes take effect.

The volume/brightness indicators rely on Ubuntu’s default notification system (notify-osd). Let’s make sure it’s running:

• Check with ps aux | grep notify-osd. If it’s not running, start it with:

  notify-osd &
  

• To auto-start it with i3, add this line to your ~/.config/i3/config:

  exec --no-startup-id notify-osd
  

Give these steps a try—one of them should bring back those handy pop-up indicators!

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Morten Nissov