Created attachment 7313 Pass socket id to D-Bus service to embed settings window There are two problems which prevent settings window from being embedded. The first one is that settings aren't plugged to xfce4-settings-manager window. That happens because socket_id is not passed via dbus (but it's declared in doc which makes this more strange). The second one is that dbus server doesn't handle this message correctly and tries to open a different type of dialog. Seems like a typo. I'm attaching the patch which fixes these 2 problems and allows to send socket id via dbus and then plug settings window. There is one problem left: settings can't be accessed while panel is not running. It will show an error message dialog and then break xfce4-settings-manager window (until https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13847 will be fixed).
I tried your patch but for me it doesn't work (with xfce4-settings 4.13.0git-4a84dc5): http://i.imgur.com/hoqIsIO.png
That's because of incompatibility between protocols. Patch affects panel-dbus-service-infos.xml so panel should be restarted too.
Viktor Odintsev referenced this bugreport in commit ca42838b6f396c5ffa01a37bb891341f517125e2 Pass socket id to D-Bus service to embed settings window (Bug #13854) https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/commit?id=ca42838b6f396c5ffa01a37bb891341f517125e2
Indeed, after restarting the patch worked as expected. Thanks!