[RESOLVED] Changing Thunderbird taskbar icon

[Princey]

I've noticed since my upgrade from Noble (24.04) to Oracular (24.10) the taskbar icon for Thunderbird isn't the default icon. The desktop icon is the correct one, however. There are times I open Thunderbird twice if I'm busy in the middle of work thinking I forgot to open Thunderbird. I've noticed that the icon used is a generic one as it's done so for other programmes such as 'nomacs' as well. (See attachment) . Is there a way to change the icon? While it's not a "problem" per se, it's an annoying inconvenience.

P.S. I'm running the original thunderbird package from the thunderbird repos, not the snap or flatpak version.

[skyfishgoo]

this is a wayland thing... if you want to go back to X11 you can choose that option in the lower left corner of the SDDM login screen after reboot or logout

if it's just the one icon you can use the edit feature of the applications menu to change the icon manually.

[Princey]

this is a wayland thing... if you want to go back to X11 you can choose that option in the lower left corner of the SDDM login screen after reboot or logout

if it's just the one icon you can use the edit feature of the applications menu to change the icon manually.

Thanks for the reply. It's not just Thunderbird. There are three applications, thus gar, it does that two. I've already mentioned that it does the same thing to nomacs. Can't remember the third application but I'll make a note of it. If I use the application launcher to edit the applications, their icons are correct. It's just the taskbar representation when the application is opened it does that with. I'll try login in to X11 later to see if that solves the issue. I'd had primarily upgraded to 24.10 to use Waydroid as it won't work outside of a Wayland session unless I'm doing something wrongly. Thanks again. Will report back once I try an X11 session when I have free time later.

[Princey]

Update:

I did as Skyfishgoo suggested when I was through with the project I was working on. Logged out, chose X11 as the desktop session and opened the three applications I had the issue with. Voila, Thunderbird, Firefox and Nomacs which I had noticed were being affected had the correct representation of icons in the task bar. I logged out of X11, then back to Wayland, the issue resurfaced. Conclusion: looks like it's a Wayland issue. Hope that's ironed out in 25.04. I hate to have to hover my mouse over an icon in the task bar just to ensure that I'm choosing the correct application to switch to.

[skyfishgoo]

you can try this icon fix manually if you don't want to rely on X11

https://discuss.kde.org/t/how-to-fix...3?u=skyfishgoo

[Princey]

you can try this icon fix manually if you don't want to rely on X11

https://discuss.kde.org/t/how-to-fix...3?u=skyfishgoo

Thanks again for the link. I've read through the entire post and links referred to. Will have to play around with it as I've noticed that it's only applications that are installed by the package manager are listed in

/usr/share/applications

So, while that will fix most of the issue, one will be left out. Will report back after I play around later with it.

[jlittle]

Just in case the OP is not aware of these points... I'll spell things out in detail, but if the reader knows all this, please skip to the question at the end.

There's several ways, two typically, to get an icon in a panel (there can be several).

1. A task bar (there can be several, it's just another widget) can have an app pinned to it, thus one sees the icon.
2. A panel can have other widgets, outside any task bar, and one type launches applications.

Applications in windowing systems typically decide on the icon that is used for them, and this may be used for several purposes, including case 1 above. If this is screwy in some way, well, we get threads like this one.

However, the icons in case 2 can be modified, just right-click the widget in the panel, choose properties, click on the icon. On occasion I've had to search for a suitable icon. It used to be easy to add a launch widget to the panel; it was one of the options if one right-clicked an entry in the menu. I don't know why this was removed. But one can find the .desktop file in dolphin, and drag it to the panel, outside of any task bar. (One can drag most files to the panel to create a widget for them, but it a .desktop file can have extra features, like setting the icon.

So, OP, why don't you put a launch widget in your panel? Then you can have whatever icon you like. (I really like a little dolphin icon for dolphin,)

[skyfishgoo]

i'm struggling to understand why this needs to be complicated

i just edit applications in the applications menu to change the icon for dolphin to a fish and the task manager icon changed as soon as i hit save... then i switched to wayland and the fish icon appears there too.

then i changed it back to the default and all is as it was.

is this not working for everyone else?

[Princey]

To John Little and skyfishgoo thanks for your responses. However, I think there's something either I didn't explain properly or you all are missing. My point is, the Thunderbird (and other affected apps) icons are fine both in the application menu and shortcut or launcher on the desktop.

As seen above, there's nothing wrong. The issue is when I open Thunderbird or any of the other programmes affected, as seen below, Wayland switches to a generic icon like indicated in the thread Skyfishgoo pointed to. I'm not the only person with this issue. Like I said, it's not a show stopper, it's just gets confusing if you have multiple applications opened at the same time and more than one generic icon appears. If you're not paying attention, you have to go through a few more clicks to get the correct application you want. It's cool if you're not in a hurry but like the first time I posted about the issue, it had caught me as I was in a hurry. I've had the issue since upgrading to 24.10 but paid it no mind. That particular day, I had three generic icons, had to respond immediately to an email hence ended up even closing the wrong window due to the generic icon representation. See below how it appears ONLY when the affected applications are opened.

Do note the W in white on yellow background is Wayland's generic icon. In this case, it was Thunderbird that was opened. I hope that clears up the confusion about changing icons. Changing the icon on the panel and applications menu in NO WAY affects how Wayland makes the call. I think the guy the post earlier linked to explains it well enough.

[claydoh]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1921078

and a possible workaround
https://forums.opensuse.org/t/thunde...taskbar/179683

also
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sungl8gWU_8&t=213s

Technically, Thunderbird packages are actually thunderbird-esr versions, until Mozilla officially starts packaging the ~136 version/
The window looks for a either the thunderbird-esr icon or just 'thunderbird' and whichever one is missing. in some cases.

or, as the Mozilla bug notes, the snap package setup is not properly setting a window class -- this is why the custom window rule setting might work.

(note this is not specifically a snap/flatpak issue, it was happening on Opensuse's native packaging, for example.)

Ill check something out when I get a moment and can reboot or get to a different machine.
I am not seeing this here on a 24.10 virtual machine and a Wayland session, with the defualt snap version of Tbird.

[Princey]

Thanks Claydoh for the response. One thing, I'm not running snap at all or any snap applications. I de-snapped since 24.04. Did not do a fresh install to 24.10 but an upgrade. A few things to note after reading up the links and watching the YouTube Video. Here are my findings:

1. The normal right click at the top of the window screen in Thunderbird (128.7) makes it difficult to locate. Had to try different areas at the top to eventually find that option. The desktop property when I called it up pointed to

   thunderbird.esr

   . Removing the .esr and restarting Thunderbird solved the issue. So, thanks for that link.
2. The other application that remains affected, nomacs, installed from default repositories has the correct entry. One thing noted was that upon initial start up, it has the correct icon but switches after fully loading. Don't know why. Have changed the condition "initially" to forced but without success. But I'm using that particular app less and less as I learn to use digiKam for my photography-based jobs slowly, but surely so it doesn't bother me as much. GIMP fixed itself when I changed it to forced.

Edit: Got nomacs to work. The trick was there were two different pointings. The desktop file in special window application settings pointed to

org.http://nomacs.nomacs

. I copied the name string from under the general tab in "Edit Applications" which is

org.nomacs.ImageLounge

. Closed and open it, and it fixed itself. Scribus was the other affected one but after the latest update two weeks ago, it fixed itself. So my situation is actually fully resolved unless some other quirky application follows suit.

Thanks again to everyone who lent a helping hand.