Adding Element Nightly as favourite in Ubuntu launcher fails to group icon

[jaywink]

Description

Installing Riot Nightly through the official team debian repository in Ubuntu and adding it as a favourite into the launcher via GNOME Shell, the icon does get added but launching it creates another icon of the running application.

Steps to reproduce

• Open up application search, search for riot, right click and click "add to favourites"
• Click the now visible riot nightly icon in the launcher

Expectation:
Riot Nightly launches without extra icon appearing to the launcher.

What happens:
Riot NIghtly launches but with an extra icon appearing to the launcher. The new icon does not have a "Add to favourites" option.

Will submit debug logs.

I've tried some usual tricks regarding .desktop files like making a copy, making the Exec differ via a parameter and adding that version as favourite, but a new icon will always appear on launch.

This issue has existed for me since moving to nightly when they became available. For stable releases, this always used to work without issues, so it seems like a packaging issue or some kind of conflict with Ubuntu launcher not identifying the locked to launcher icon with the running app.

Version information

• Platform: Desktop
• OS: Ubuntu 19.10
• Version: nightly 2020052301

[t3chguy]

@jaywink are you still seeing this issue?

[SimonBrandner]

@jaywink, is this still an issue?

[jaywink]

Sorry for taking such a long time (over a year! :D) to get back to this. VirtualBox is such a pain, I cry every time I need to use it.

I wanted a fresh Ubuntu installation to try this and it looks like the issue still remains and it's not just my desktop environment broken.

Freshly installed Element Nightly does not show a "Add to favorites" in the context menu, indicating it's not registered properly in a way that allows GNOME to figure out it's something that can be pinned to the launcher.

Element Desktop however does work fine. Images below for nightly and desktop on a fresh Ubuntu 20.04.

Ps. Somewhat confusingly, the "New window" on the Element Desktop actually launches Element Nightly! :D If nightly is already running, it brings it into the front.

[SethFalco]

I've encountered the same issue, unfortunately.

Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) x86_64
Desktop Environment: GNOME 3.38.6
Element Nightly version: 2022012901
Olm version: 3.2.8

This only occurs with Element Nightly, but not with the stable release of Element. 🤔

My Firefox Nightly used to have the same issue, but I managed to fix that by naming the .desktop file and Name entry in it to nightly/Nightly instead of firefox-nightly/Firefox Nightly. (As the extra icon that would appear was just called "Nightly".)

Not sure what's wrong in this case with Element Nightly. I'll try to investigate further, but meanwhile feel free to ask for anything if you know that might help provide more info.

[SethFalco]

Ahh, not sure what I did wrong last time since I could've sworn I tested this before…

I simply renamed element-desktop-nightly.desktop to element-nightly.desktop, that resolves the issue.

I've also verified by uninstalling Element Nightly, deleting all related .desktop files, then reinstalling it.
After reproducing the issue, the only thing I did was sudo mv element-desktop-nightly.desktop element-nightly.desktop in the /usr/share/applications directory. Then it groups correctly.

[SethFalco]

Another thing, if this file is renamed in the repo, it might be worth checking the Desktop Entry specifications/docs.

The name of the desktop entry should follow the "reverse DNS" convention: it should start with a reversed DNS domain name controlled by the author of the application, in lower case. The domain name should be followed by the name of the application, which is conventionally written with words run together and initial capital letters (CamelCase). For example, if the owner of example.org writes "Foo Viewer", they might choose the name org.example.FooViewer, resulting in a file named org.example.FooViewer.desktop.

Well-known names containing the dash are allowed but not recommended, because the dash is not allowed in some related uses of reversed DNS names, such as D-Bus object paths and interface names, and Flatpak app IDs. If the author's domain name contains a dash, replacing it with an underscore is recommended: this cannot cause ambiguity, because underscores are not allowed in DNS domain names.

— https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html#file-naming

[jaywink]

Woop indeed, this solves the issue for me too, thanks @SethFalco \o/

Myself I made a copy of it via cp /usr/share/applications/element-desktop-nightly.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/element-nightly.desktop

Then as this produces two identical entries in the launcher, I edited my local version name to be something I can recognize.

So to fix this bug the Debian package needs to install the .desktop file with the right name?

[justjanne]

Setting the correct StartupWMClass matches the desktop file correctly as well. As the release builds use the same technique currently, it might be the simplest solution to just set the correct StartupWMClass for the nightly version as well.