It used to work until yesterday at least, and I think it happened after installing and running a virtual machine through Virtualbox. Pretty much the whole desktop is idle and unusable. I don't mind this, as I don't usually use the desktop to store files or folders on it, but I am curious what I did and how it can be reversed or intentionally brought to this state.
At some point icons disappeared, can't be added, I can't left click + hold to select anything, and the right click menu doesn't give me anything but the 3 options seen on the screenshot. The right click menu works fine when I am in folders though.
I also have the same issue. In my case reinstalling the ubuntu desktop worked.
After running this, restart the system.
In my case it was probably related to the fuse package that I have installed manually to allow a third party app to work (kDrive from Infomaniak). Reinstalling ubuntu-desktop replaced fuse with fuse3 and now all is working. After a reboot all my Desktop icons are here.
Restarting didn't fix this, but shutting the pc off, and then on again did fix it...
I also faced the same problem. You may follow this:
Using synaptic package manager you can search whether there is ubuntu-desktop package in your system.
You can install that package using the same app (Synaptic). Install it.
Then restart the system. Everything will be OK.
......... I could fix the problem this way.
After installing the
sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktopyou might need to enable the extensions from the extension manager. If you cannot see desktop icons option in the list, tryinstalling sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons-ng, and enabling it from the extensions.