Tray-Icons-Reloaded VS NsCDE

Tray Icons Reloaded

"It only works with Xorg and XWayland."

I don't know if there's an extension that works on all the icons, but if you're on Xorg, the Tray Icons Reloaded extension has a feature where it collapses app indicators into a … button. So your Discord and Slack icons are hidden, but your wifi status is still viable.

I use https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/2890/tray-icons-reloaded/ and put the limit to one, then I don't see any icons except three dots which then shows my icons when I click on it in an overflow, like https://github.com/MartinPL/Tray-Icons-Reloaded/blob/master/.github/overflow.png

- Tray Icons Reloaded: https://github.com/MartinPL/Tray-Icons-Reloaded

I also change a few things using GNOME Tweaks; namely setting the application theme to Orchis-grey-dark-compact (https://github.com/vinceliuice/Orchis-theme), icon theme to Flatery-Dark (https://github.com/cbrnix/Flatery) and system font to Inter (https://rsms.me/inter/).

I've been using this setup for quite a while and I've been very happy with my computing experience, both in terms of aesthetics and overall UX. I tried tiling WMs for a while (first KWin and then i3 / Sway) but I found that I'm just a messy person who tends to be more productive with a floating WM.

I think the extension you want is Tray Icons: Reloaded. Have a look at its "overflow mode".

NsCDE freezes when deiconifying an icon on the desktop · Issue #113 · NsCDE/NsCDE – Closed

This one is maybe even older, but conforms to your description of what you are searching for. https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE

Sounds perfect for debian stable. Aside from distro, this github might be interesting for you.

Like NsCDE [1], these kinds of old school environments are nice an all until you fire up a modern browser or an app made for Gnome and you end up in a kind of aesthetic mess.

[1] https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE

then NsCDE is the gigachad meme