@BrodieOnLinux In essense, GNOME still does have a system tray... Sort of. It's basically just reserved for the system status, like network connections or screen capture or recording or sound devices, power state, etc.

Applications show their state on the icon. Which is visible on the dash/dock/whatever else you wanna call it.

Not every app supports this mode of operation as of yet, that's why we still can have the old-school systray extension. Fair enough.

@10volt