On a small-screen laptop, the device notifier popup takes up a significant amount of screen real estate and can obstruct my workflow. Every time I connect a new device or disconnect one, the popup appears and demands my attention. In the device notifier settings there is an option to disable "open popup when new device is connected". However, there is no corresponding option to stop the popup automatically appearing when disconnecting a device. The device notifier popup appears even when right-clicking a device in the file manager and selecting "unmount". This is entirely unnecessary and annoying.

I would appreciate the popups more if they were not so persistent. I wish there was a setting to make the popups spontaneously disappear after a certain number of seconds. On my current KDE Neon installation, the device notifier popup just stays there until I explicitly click its panel icon (or the "hidden icons" arrow). In previous KDE desktops I have used on other distros, it was much easier to dismiss the popup by clicking anywhere on the desktop or the popup itself. Now I have to go the panel to get rid of it.

If anyone has any tips on how to manage system tray popups, I would greatly appreciate it. I would also be very happy if more settings features could be added in future versions of Plasma to enable the user to alter popup behavior.

My solution for now is to completely disable the device notifier in system tray settings. Devices can be mounted and unmounted in the file manager, so it is possible to live without the device notifier.

Have you tried System Settings, Notifications, Other Notifications, select Tray Icons only?
Does that do what you need?

Thanks for the suggestion, but I cannot find any item called "other notifications" in the notifications settings. Which "event source" is it listed under?

dcbuist wrote:Thanks for the suggestion, but I cannot find any item called "other notifications" in the notifications settings. Which "event source" is it listed under?

Sorry I presumed you were running a recent version of KDE Plasma. In older versions it may be somewhere else - just go into System Settings and search for Notifications. You should be able to find the system helpers notifications where you can select the type of notification.

Right click on device icon in tray then "Device notifier settings". Under General you can uncheck "Open popup when new device is plugged in".