Eventually, every Linux user opens an app and finds a generic placeholder icon staring back from their dock/panel. It looks like the dock is broken, but it almost never is - the cause is a single line in the app’s .desktop file, and it only takes a minute to fix. Here’s how to find it and fix it yourself, on any desktop.

As the maintainer of Plank Reloaded, the most common bug report I get is “this app has the wrong icon.” It’s almost never the dock - it’s a broken StartupWMClass in the app’s .desktop file. So I wrote up how to find the right value on X11, Wayland, and KDE, and why deleting the line often fixes it.

  • RichardNixos@lemmy.ml
    1·
    4 hours ago

    One thing I’ve noticed that’s funny is that sometimes when I use waypipe to launch a remote app locally it will have a random-ass icon, like a steam game or something