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user824808
Asked: 2020-07-25 01:27:29 +0800 CST

How to make desktop icons display on startup of Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa

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Often when I start my PC the desktop icons do not display in the actual desktop.

To clarify, my shortcut launchers do not appear on my desktop but of course Nautilus and Thunar show them in the folder: ~/Desktop. The missing items include launchers I created or were created for me by apps and also "Rubbish Bin" and my "Home" folder icon which was created through settings.

To date I have had to reboot or log out and re-login to fix. The problem repeated this morning on start-up up from cold.

This is slow because I have startup background apps including: Conky, Dropbox, Mega and Universal Media Server.

Is there a quicker way?

Note: Possibly related but I continue to get strange behaviour whenever I edit a desktop launcher or create a new one. A bug registered as Bug #1878392

.desktop gnome-shell desktop-icons gnome-shell-extension 20.04

1 Answers

  1. Method 1 here: How to restart GUI on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa provides a faster workaround to this bug.

    While logged in to your GNOME desktop press Alt + F2 key combination. Into the Enter a Command box type r and press Enter. This also works in 16.04 and 18.04 and doesn't force close any open windows or log out.

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