Plasma forgets the positions of the desktop icons

Again and again KDE (Plasma 6.0.1) forgets the positions of the desktop icons.
I’ve grouped some icons of steam games in one corner, but often after a stand by break, but always after a xkill they are arranged back to the top left corner.
This happens with Wayland and also with X11.

Are the positions of the icons saved in any config file, that is possibly resetet/deletet?

It should be the file ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc, look for positions=

Unfortunately this is a known problem. The infrastructure surrounding desktop icon positions is rather old and fragile, and poorly maintainable. We’re hoping to do a partial rewrite for Plasma 6.1 that will improve robustness.

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Thank you Nate, I hope that this problem will be addressed and solved at some time. I will close this thread as solved.

After upgrading to 6.0.5, this became too frequent even without any external monitor.

I already have manual sort set in desktop settings, is there any way to permanently fix the position of icons?

It’s really annoying. Is there any bug report for that worth watching?

I hoped it to be solved in Plasma 6, but I’m now using 6.1.5 and it’s still there.

I am now on 6.2.1. So far I had my Icons move once on the reboot after the update.
I think it might be fixed now.

Yes, I can confirm that! In KDE-6.2.1 the icon positions are kept. :+1:

Still having desktop icons rearranging themselves.

Apparently KDE developers cannot duplicate a cause.
It happens with my hardware and software settings.
Any way to log those settings for KDE group to replicate ?

Maybe it’s 458007 – Desktop icons shift when non-auto-hide Panel loads on boot which can position icons weirdly; desktop should reserve space for it in advance
Otherwise, you can search for it in the bug tracker.

Hopefully all of this will be a thing of the past once Refactor icon positioner saving and loading (!2607) · Merge requests · Plasma / Plasma Desktop · GitLab is merged!

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For folks searching on the topic and coming across this post, this article by @akselmo was really well-written I thought, and describes the process of how desktop icons work in Plasma and how folks have been working to improve it:

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