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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-20T18:56:55+00:00

How would I run a constant process in the background while there is a

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How would I run a constant process in the background while there is a gtk system tray icon running? Would I just start two threads and launch the process with one and the system tray icon? Or is there a better way? Sorry, but I am somewhat new to gtk.

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  1. Editorial Team

    If I understand it correctly, then you have an application sitting in the system tray and it needs to periodically check for an external condition.

    Your GUI thread can’t block for a long time or it would become unresponsive.

    I can think of three techniques to solve this:

    • Use a timer to periodically poll from the main (GUI) thread (g_timeout_add() or similar).
    • Create a separate thread which runs a busy-wait loop (check for the condition; sleep; check; rinse and repeat). Glib has support for thread abstraction which you could use; example GThread usage in Brasero.
    • Use asyncronous IO to check for the condition. If you are monitoring a file or directory for changes, then you could use GFileMonitor from GIO.
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