Gnome-Tweaks fails to start up

Hi, since I updated my system around 29th of december, the dark font (layout “manjaro”), all pretty default I would say, broke down. After that I noticed that I cannot start gnome-tweaks, my journal says:

# journalctl
[...]
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]: Traceback (most recent call last):
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:   File "/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/gtweak/app.py", line 52, in do_activate
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:     self.win = Window(self, model)
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:   File "/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/gtweak/tweakview.py", line 58, in __init__
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:     self._model.load_tweaks(self)
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:   File "/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/gtweak/tweakmodel.py", line 107, in load_tweaks
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:     mods = __import__("gtweak.tweaks", globals(), locals(), tweak_files, 0)
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:   File "/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/gtweak/tweaks/tweak_group_startup.py", line 352, in <module>
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:     AutostartListBoxTweakGroup(),
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:   File "/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/gtweak/tweaks/tweak_group_startup.py", line 295, in __init__
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:     if not AutostartFile(df).is_start_at_login_enabled():
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:   File "/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/gtweak/utils.py", line 193, in is_start_at_login_enabled
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:     return open(self._user_autostart_file).read().find("X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=false") == -1
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:   File "/usr/lib/python3.10/codecs.py", line 322, in decode
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]:     (result, consumed) = self._buffer_decode(data, self.errors, final)
Jan 19 13:50:29 thiscomputer org.gnome.tweaks.desktop[18359]: UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xa3 in position 156: invalid start byte

I tried re-installing the gnome-tweaks package but this did not help. Does anyone else experience this issue or do you have any idea on how to further debug it?

Could be an issue with your locale settings.

What’s the output of:

locale
$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TIME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_NAME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

since this (manjaro) install I never touched the locale manually, file unchanged since then.

The output is normal.

I found someone else that had the same issue on the gnome-tweaks issue tracker:

Yes, I also saw that issue there. On the Gnome-Matrix channel they said it sounded more like a manjaro issue so I thought I’d ask here. But as far as I can see manjaro is only delivering the package?! Version is the same as on archlinux and its PKGBUILD looks okay I guess.

I opened an issue there.

Did you check and see if there is an invalid autostart desktop file like in the above issue?

What’s the output of (requires desktop-file-utils):

desktop-file-validate ~/.config/autostart/*

You might also try renaming the ~/.config/autostart/ folder to autostart-bak or something temporarily then try starting gnome-tweaks. If it runs fine, then there definitely is an invalid desktop file in the autostart folder.

Indeed, this did fix my issue and your command gives me some errors.

Where can I read more about this folder? I guess I need to read more about this.

Well…

See: