Hi All!
I’ve been a user of syncthing for a while now and have used the GTK frontend to do so and it’s working great! One thing that kinda bothered me about it though was the rotating syncthing logo when syncthing is doing its thing.
So I created a new logo especially for the GTK application including some animated icons (in animated GIFs for this example) for it to look somewhat nicer.
What do you think?
Regards, 2nv2u
P.s. How can I start syncthing GTK minimized? (gnome-shell)
Much better than the rotating icon. 
That’s pretty cool, especially the animated icons!
I’m opposed to this. That’s not the Syncthing logo, but it’s very similar. The Syncthing logo is fine to use, and of course any other logo you may invent, but this slight variation on the Syncthing logo just introduces confusion about the “brand” in my opinion.
Maybe he could create a version where the lines are all white and only the dots diverge a little bit from the original in one of the two states? I mean if it’s not rotating then some small changes have to be made in one state to animate it.
So the original svg is available on github, why just not use that for animations?
I don’t see the need to animate the logo at all to be honest. Badge it with an animated “syncing” icon or something?
I like the animation too. Its simple and not annoying while it shows that something is happening/transfered. (I suppose nothing is moving/blinking/rotating, when nothing is transfered/happening to the local network)
When I compare the original Logo with those on the upper right side, I barely recognize much difference, beside the darker faded (white) main circle and the darker blue outlines of the inner small 3 circles.
I wouldn’t say that one is better than the other, but I’d like to have nice, slow and simple animations, with not much colorchanging. The Dropbox animation (those fading little boxes) and the bittorrent sync rotating icon are also ok for my eyes.
Imho, the rotating icons are in the majority of cloud programs and have become kinda naturalised in our trays… so why not starting something new?
Anyways, I never have seen a rotating icon for any installed syncthing on my systems (mac/linux/win), because there is none in the comand-line tools.
But I’d love to have an icon one day…atm I’m just too lazy to hack with all the instructions given here in the forum. I’d like to keep it working while using the original and supported software from the developer-team.
just my 2 cents…
Well, to be really honest, I fully agree with it that syncthing should have one identity! I actually started using the real syncthing logo but ended up with something that didn’t look nice at all since it scales very badly as a small icon. That’s why I started making the lines and nodes larger, that’s basically all I did. Any suggestions on just a derived logo of the original just for use in the task / system tray?
I think it gives it a nice modern feel, if the Syncthing logo itself would be animated in a subtle way. This gives me the info I need, but doesn’t aggressivly grab my attention like a quick rotation, blinking or similar.
And if the logo changes during an up/download, it’s not easily recognizable as the same application anymore. Many people have so much crap running, they can barely destinguish the tools they actually want to use from all the preinstalled trashware.
If the syncthing icon itself were animated (in the tray, not on the website etc.), the recognizability kept and there is no confusion from a branding perspective.
I’ve experimented with using arrows next the logo similar to how wifi / network icons sometimes show their connectivity status, but as generalmanager says it add another icon(s) next to it and might be confusing. Still experimenting with it though using them in a corner.
Since I’m using Gnome Shell as my desktop I found another interesting extension. I actually use(d) syncthing GTK just for it’s icon in the system tray anyway, so the original web interface itself is fine by me for configuration purposes. This extension doesn’t show any state however, so I decided to continue working on it myself.
This extension actually proves my point though, the icon looks very badly and even he enlarged the node circles and the lines as well, in the original icon the nodes are barely distinguishable.
I am the author of the Gnome shell extension, and I am fully aware of it having rather inconvenient icons. I tried to fit the original Syncthing icon into the Gnome style appearance. To this end, I created a new vector graphics (SVG) file in black & white colors.
If you have any idea, on how to improve the icons, please let me know. I would also be glad about any actual help anybody could offer. (Having said this, I also want to mention that I prefer unanimated icons over animated icons, as IMHO animations are just distractions.)
Guys there is already an PR, where the same/similar Icon Topic was discussed. Maybe we should working on an Icon Concept for all Platforms/ 3rd Party Tools?!