It seems that for sni-qt to work, Qt4 should to be patched with: https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~indicator-applet-developers/sni-qt/trunk.13.04/view/head:/patches/qsystemtrayicon-plugin-system-4.7.4.diff It's needed with any systray that works based on appindicator. Enlightenment already has it and KDE will soon (http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2014/06/where-are-my-systray-icons/).