Server - Change System Tray Icon on Connection

[---- 9]

Hi all, sorry in advance for the long winded post. I tried to keep it as short as possible while still acurately conveying my thoughts.

 

This isn't necessarily a feature request, but it could be. You know the lovely Emby Server system tray icon?

 

I was wondering how difficult it would be for the server coders to tweak its functionality, and if that's something they'd be interested in doing.

 

Basically, here's the situation:

I'm using the computer (which runs the server) for tasks unrelated to Emby, and I finish what I'm doing so I want to walk away. Like any power-conscious individual, I often want to put the computer to sleep/hibernate/off. First, however, I need to know if anybody is connected to the server, so I don't accidentally shut it off on them. So, I have to right click on the tray icon > Configure Emby > login and look. I don't keep the web browser perpetually open to the web interface, so it's become a routine that I have to do every time I want to power down the computer. I'd like to make this routine simpler.

 

 

So, I thought of three options that could possibly make things a bit easier:

 

1 ) Change the system tray icon when a remote client connects, and change it back to the default when there are no clients connected. It could be something simple like little dots, as long as it's noticable:

This way I could just glance at the icon before shutting the computer down.

 

 

2) Add info to the right-click menu. Just a number of remote clients currently connected:

Or, a more complex option would be to list who is connected instead of a number.

 

 

3) Add popup notifications. Either the kind that integrate with windows notifications (letting windows decide how to display them) (demonstrated here on Windows 10):

Or make more independent popups, like the kind you see with 3rd party firewalls/antivirus programs. (Avast puts ads in these types of notifications instead of windows notifications, so you can't stop them.). (Between the two, I'd suggest integrated over independent popups.) I'm aware that Emby Server has a few plugins available for Windows push notifications (like PushBullet), but that doesn't seem like a good solution to me. Those plugins are great if you want to notify a different device, but it seems like a waste when you don't want that message to be sent anywere, and just make a popup on the machine the event occured on.

 

 

All three options have their pros and cons. For example, the icon change might be easiest, but for a forgetful user (such as myself), it might not be obvious enough to get their attention before shutting down the computer. The popup would be noticable, but I might miss the popup (afk or in fullscreen program) and shut off the computer, thinking nobody ever connected, or I just might forget that I saw the popup when it comes time to shut off the computer.

 

Basically what I'm saying, is that a combination of two or more of these options might be best, but even one of these options would be much better than none. If anybody thinks of a better solution than these three, then I would love to hear it. If you think any of this is too complex to implement at this time, then I understand, it just couldn't hurt to ask about it. If this isn't viable, then I'll just write a program that reads the activity logs or something, and makes a little message of its own.

 

 

Lastly, I wanted to leave a quick side note. Since this is my first time posting to these forums, I wanted to first say that Emby, its apps, and its supporting community are great. I've only been using Emby for a bit over a month now, but it's clear that you guys have a good thing going here. Thanks for all your hard work. It's very much appreciated.

[Danee 57]

Good ideas, like the first 2 the best.

[---- 9]

Thanks for moving this to the appropriate forum, Happy2Play. I considered putting this in 'Feature Requests' to begin with, but I noticed that 'Feature Requests' is a subforum of 'App Support', which doesn't include Emby Server from what I could see. Since it's now in 'Feature Requests', I'd prepend the title with 'Windows Server' to comply with the requested feature request template, but that's not something that I can change. Sorry about that

 

Edit: Thanks for updating the title too

Edited November 7, 2015 by ----

[JayFiveAlive 4]

7 year old buuuuump!