Wallpaper suddenly turns black, while app panel and app launcher are gone after an unintended log off

I don’t know what triggered this sudden change. I was in the middle of watching a YouTube video when suddenly the screen kind of logged out on its own and when I logged in I have lost the wallpaper (screen is black), panel, system tray, and application launcher. I have a shortcut to app launcher and it does not work anymore. Right clicking on the blank screen does nothing. I cannot reboot as I cannot access app launcher. Thankfully I have three virtual desktops open before the sudden log out with Firefox and Terminal opened. At the moment I cannot open any programs other than these two. One virtual desktop where no app were open is completely black. My system is up to date.

EDIT: I also tried sudo reboot and to my surprise, my password is not recognized.

It’s solved now, what works for me is to run sudo systemctl restart display-manager. After this, I am brought to the log in screen (splash screen) with password field and several power buttons including restart. If I type in the password and log in back, the same issue still persisted. But if I chose to restart, the issue disappears. The strange thing that I don’t understand is that my password works for the above sudo systemctl ... commands but not with sudo reboot.

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