It used to be gnome-power-manager or something of that sort, but now I can't seem to find it. When I run gnome-session from within awesome, it loads all the applets, i.e. nm-applet and the keyboard layout switcher, yet it doesn't load the battery applet, and so I'd like to launch it with a command.
SnapOverflow
Edit: The mentioned ppa seems no longer available as of April 2014. Please check before following this solution. For more information see the comments below this answer.
First Install Battery-Status by Running following command in terminal.
To run ‘Battery Status’ as an Indicator-applet in Ubuntu you’ll need to run the following command in a terminal:
To launch the indicator mode on log-in add it to your ‘Start-up applications’ in
System > Preferences > Startup Applications, entering the command above in the command field.You should be able to restore the menu-bar icon by using the Dconf editor. This is probably already installed, but if not, it's in the Sofware Center as Dconf Editor. Note that's a title not the package name. In Synaptic it's dconf-tools. The command line is sudo apt-get install dconf-tools.
This is a low-level editor for system settings, so be careful.
To get to the power icon setting:
com --> canonical --> indicator --> power. After clicking power, look for "icon-policy" in the right pane. Presumably it will say "never." Change it to "present"
the default battery indicator in ubuntu is part of the 'unity-panel-service' it's called 'indicator-power' and can't – as far as I know – be called on its own.
However you can try to install 'indicator-applet' and then 'indicator-power' if it's not already installed. And then try launching 'indicator-applet' and see what you end up with.
Sorry for bad formatting my cell phone somehow doens't get the spacing for the code right