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After updating my system a while ago, I noticed that multiple icons within the Desktop environment were replaced by compatibility mode icons (or at least very outdated ones) and red stop/prohibited symbols (see screenshots). These are all system icons meaning that also all system apps are affected (e.g. Terminal (+ symbol for multiple tabs), many parts of settings, the "Show apps" symbol in the taskbar, ...).

This guy seemed to have a similar problem, but his provided fix did not help in my case: Red icons in Ubuntu 22.04

I tried multiple suggestions by friends and colleagues and the internet, nothing worked or brought back the icons:

  1. Update icon cache
  2. Reinstall Ubuntu Desktop
  3. Reinstall Gnome
  4. Reinstall all packages using icons by searching the links that point to /usr/share/icons/

Does anyone have additional solutions I can try out? Missing these is especially frustrating in apps that heavily rely on their icons and when there is no additional description until being hovered.

If any questions arise, either due to missing details or my German language settings, I will happily clarify the question.

System Information:

  • Ubuntu 22.04
  • X11 Desktop
  • Gnome
  • No further customization

Replaced application symbol Example of missing icons in Settings app and system tray

Cedric
  • 111

1 Answers1

1

After quite some time I was finally able to solve this by reinstalling ALL packages somehow related to the desktop environment including all the dependencies. The problem is that ubuntu-desktop is just a meta-package in the current versions, hence reinstalling doesn't actually solve anything. With the solution provided here Reinstall package and its installed dependencies for reinstalling with all dependencies I finally got my icons back. I simply applied this to ubuntu-desktop, yaru-theme-gnome-shell and gnome-shell in that order. I also applied this to the packages it breaks.

# ubuntu desktop
apt-cache depends ubuntu-desktop | grep '[ |]Hängt ab von: [^<]' | cut -d: -f2 | tr -d ' ' | xargs sudo apt-get --reinstall install -y
apt-cache depends ubuntu-desktop | grep '[ |]Empfiehlt: [^<]' | cut -d: -f2 | tr -d ' ' | xargs sudo apt-get --reinstall install -y
apt-cache depends ubuntu-desktop | grep '[ |]Beschädigt: [^<]' | cut -d: -f2 | tr -d ' ' | xargs sudo apt-get --reinstall install -y

yaru-theme-gnome-shell


apt-cache depends yaru-theme-gnome-shell | grep '[ |]Hängt ab von: [^<]' | cut -d: -f2 | tr -d ' ' | xargs sudo apt-get --reinstall install -y
apt-cache depends yaru-theme-gnome-shell | grep '[ |]Empfiehlt: [^<]' | cut -d: -f2 | tr -d ' ' | xargs sudo apt-get --reinstall install -y
apt-cache depends yaru-theme-gnome-shell | grep '[ |]Beschädigt: [^<]' | cut -d: -f2 | tr -d ' ' | xargs sudo apt-get --reinstall install -y


gnome-shell


apt-cache depends gnome-shell | grep '[ |]Hängt ab von: [^<]' | cut -d: -f2 | tr -d ' ' | xargs sudo apt-get --reinstall install -y
apt-cache depends gnome-shell | grep '[ |]Empfiehlt: [^<]' | cut -d: -f2 | tr -d ' ' | xargs sudo apt-get --reinstall install -y
apt-cache depends gnome-shell | grep '[ |]Beschädigt: [^<]' | cut -d: -f2 | tr -d ' ' | xargs sudo apt-get --reinstall install -y

Although I wasn't able to pinpoint it to a specific error, I hope this helps anyone facing similar problems.

Cedric
  • 111