Desktop folders not starting with custom icons.

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1

I am having trouble with my desktop folder icons. On startup, all my folders appear as the default folder icon style. I can fix it by drag selecting them and right clicking them and deselecting. This makes the folder refresh and take the icon of the .directory file inside the folder. I originally set the folder icons by right clicking → properties → select icon. I would like the folders to display the assigned icons on startup.

2

hi, welcome

what is the output of kinfo

if you run systemctl restart --user plasma-plasmashell.service
does that fix the icons on the desktop?

if you create a new user acct, does this issue still happen there?

3

Hi skyfishgoo,

  • Here is kinfo
Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 13
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.6
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.13.0
Qt Version: 6.8.2
Kernel Version: 6.1.0-32-amd64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS w/ Radeon 780M Graphics
Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (30.6 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor 1: AMD Radeon Graphics
Graphics Processor 2: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU
  • systemctl restart reloads the environment but the default folder icon persists.
  • I made another user and created a folder with a set icon and it works as expected. How can I replicate this behavior on my main user?

Thank you.

4

unless you can roll back your dot files to a previous working state, then you will just have try and find the issue by brute force

# brute force troubleshooting...
mv ~/.config ~/.configBORKED
mv ~/.local ~/.localBORKED
# logout and log back in again to force plasma to recreate the folders with default settings
# open split views of the folders for comparison and file copy
dolphin --split ~/.config ~/.configBORKED
dolphin --split ~/.local ~/.localBORKED
# copy back half of the BORKED folder contents at a time and relog to see if issue returns
# if it does, then delete the folder again, relog, and only copy half of that previous half
# repeat until the culprit is found, then finally, copy back everything BUT that culprit bit

i would suggest enabling the built in kde backups utility and have it make regular snapshots of your /home or config directories so that when this happens in the future you will have some way to get back to a working state.

1 Like
5

I backup my files regularly, but I never had a working state without this specific issue before, I just dealt with it manually every time it bothered me after logging in, since it was just a minor aesthetic issue. However, I have been slightly idiotic… After applying your binary search brute force, I found the culprit file: plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc. I checked the file and did another binary search until I found the [292] applet with my desktop icon positions. I messed around and changed previews=false to previews=true. This shows previews on top of the folder icon which I had turned off, but consequently doesn’t allow you to have custom folder icons.

Solution:

As it turns out, there is a setting in right-click (desktop) → Desktop and Wallpaper → Icons → Previews: Show preview thumbnails (turn on) → Configure Preview Plugins, then turn off everything except AppImage to keep the folder icon showing without the previews for what is inside the folder.

In hindsight, the .directory file is within the folder so it’s technically showing that as a “preview” even though it replaces the default folder icon instead of being place on top of it.

Thank you!