See: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-control-center/commit/?id=7b12c68 One possible solution is, for XFCE 4.14 (because UPower 1.0 is required), remove the ability to configure them and simply show what UPower returns from GetCriticalAction method. This patch is around for a while, it makes xfpm's critical battery power options useful again (if configured with "CriticalPowerAction=Ignore"), but I do not know what UPower upstream thinks about it. https://gist.github.com/m13253/b49725d2e661768fe399844d702d562d Another option is make xfpm deal with /etc/UPower/UPower.conf directly...
> One possible solution is, for XFCE 4.14 (because UPower 1.0 is required), remove the ability to configure them and simply show what UPower returns from GetCriticalAction method. That's not very nice, but I guess that's plausible. > Another option is make xfpm deal with /etc/UPower/UPower.conf directly... I'd personally avoid tampering with the conf file directly.
As far as I can tell the critical actions still work as intended. So I can't tell what the actual problem is here and there hasn't been any update in a long time.