Nautilus custom folder icons in /home disappeared and i cant change them anymore

Question

Recently my customized icons inside my /home disappeared after an upgrade. For example i had a customized icon for the folder /home/USER/Downloads.

Last time i added these custom icon by right clicking the Downloads folder -> Properties -> drag and drop the new icon on the actual icon (or click the icon and navigate to the new icon) -> done.

Im not longer able to change the icons this way in /home/USER but i am able to change the icons if i navigate further to /home/USER/Downloads/TESTFOLDER

Im a bit out of a clue actually how this come up and how to solve this small issue.

Im on 16.04 by the way

Answer 1

In case someone comes to this, i was able to solve this by doing the following:

sudo rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/*
sudo rm -rf ~/.config/nautilus
sudo reboot

When back at the desktop session i was able to use custom icons for my folders in ~/ again