1

After upgrading a particular system from 13.10 to 14.04 there are a few items in the launcher portrayed with a question mark:

enter image description here

This is not the old problem of windows mismatching applications. The icon is always rendered this way, no shadow icon is created when the application is running and it gets the visual semantics and behaviour as any other functioning launcher item.

It is neither a missing icon or a wrong icon path. Following some shell output regarding one of the applications concerned:

$ cat /usr/share/applications/eclipse.desktop 
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Eclipse
Icon=/usr/local/eclipse.kepler/eclipse.png
Exec=env UBUNTU_MENUPROXY= /usr/local/eclipse.kepler/eclipse
Terminal=false
Categories=Development;IDE;Java;

$ ls -la /usr/local/eclipse.kepler/eclipse.png
-rw-r--r-- 1 lads lads 53556 Jun 11 19:00 /usr/local/eclipse.kepler/eclipse.png

What could then be the cause?

1
  • Eliah, this is a different issue. These icons were permanently portrayed as question marks, even if the application was not running. And as you can see the solution is also different. Aug 23, 2014 at 7:11

1 Answer 1

1

This was relatively easy to solve:

  1. Right click on the item and click Remove from Launcher.

  2. With the file browser open the /usr/share/applications folder and search for the file corresponding to the application (e.g. Eclipse - in the file system it is named eclipse.desktop).

  3. Drag this file to the Launcher.

2
  • This fix only works temporarily, after some time the question will be back. Nov 10, 2015 at 10:57
  • Is temporary solution acceptable?
    – Anwar
    Nov 23, 2016 at 19:02

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .