Why is vlc systray icon in i3 status bar

Question

Somehow VLC has put a little icon in my i3 status bar. I know that I can go into VLC preferences and uncheck the "Show systray icon" option to remove it, but my question is how is this happening in the first place? Nothing in my ~/.i3/config or ~/.i3status.conf says anything about VLC. How does i3 know to put the icon there?

FYI I'm running debian jessie.

Answer 1

You can only specify where to put tray. You have no power which icon goes where (or blacklist an icon like in unity).

You could specify on which monitor (or even bar) the tray have to be (as I understand correctly only on one bar the tray can show icons). There is possible race condition so I suggest to specify on which bar You want and/or don't want a tray.

the setting for this is in bar {...} section in .i3/config

bar {
  tray_output primary  # as specified in xrandr
# or
  tray_output LVDS-0   # to pin to specific display
# or 
  tray_output none     # to specify on other bar to not show icons in event of race condition
}