Weird behaviour of KDE's Icon-Only Task Manager and Thunderbird

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1 
Operating System: Manjaro Linux 
KDE Plasma Version: 6.0.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.2.0
Qt Version: 6.7.1
Kernel Version: 6.9.3-3-MANJARO (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
System Version: -CF

After update to latest Thunderbird 115.12.1 (Flatpak), clicking the Thunderbird (TB) icon in Icon-only Task Manager, would launch the app separately, ie. the TB icon remained in Icon-only Task Manager, but the app was launched as 2nd icon at the end of the Icon-only Task Manager, as shown below:
image

Thinking that there could be some bug, I unpinned the TB icon from the Icon-only Task Manager.
Then, I launched TB from App Launcher, and I tried to pin it again.
However, the option to pin it to Icon-only Task Manager was greyed out, as shown below:
image

The only way to pin TB back to Icon-only Task Manager, was to right click TB icon in Application Launcher, and select “Pin to Task Manager”.

But even so, the TB icon would still act as a launcher only, and the app will be launched as separate icon at the end of the Icon-only Task Manager, as previously shown:
image

So, I’m back to square one.
Anyone has a solution?

2

The only explanation I can come up with is that you probably have two instances of thunderbird installed on your machine, one being the regular version from the repository, and the other being the FlatPak version. :man_shrugging:

3

This is new installation of Manjaro, and I have never installed TB from Extra repo, only Flatpak.

Below is an illustration I found on internet, of similar happening on Firefox.
Unfortunately, the OP did not have a solution as well.

4

Mozilla seem to have made some recent changes to the way they generate .desktop files for their Flatpaks so my guess is they messed something up there.

The issue doesn’t exist with the native versions in the Manjaro repositories (and I’ve no idea why someone would want to use bloated Flatpak versions instead) so I suggest you report this issue to them - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org

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5

The non-Flatpak version app, usually have dependency on other elements within the system.
And since these apps do not have control on the update of these elements, it may end up one app requiring v5.7 of the element, but the repo only has v5.6 or lower.

This, I have learnt it the hardway, especially with KDE framework.

i see.
Seems like there is nothing we can do, till they fix it.
Thanks for the info!

6

I am having the same issue. One thing I figured out that changed is the class name. Desktop files use StartupWMClass to recognize if the program they refer to has been started. The desktop file has “thunderbird” but the class name was changed to “thunderbird-esr”, which is a weird thing to do in a minor release. However, fixing the class name in the desktop file does not fix the issues you described so there must be more.

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7

Indeed, the condition does not arise when using versions of the aforementioned packages from the official Manjaro repositories. This highlights another inherent weakness of containerized applications; the more they are isolated from a system, the more the likelihood of inconsistencies like these.

You could use the repo packages, as originally intended. To overcome the non-issue you described regarding dependencies, usually a little patience goes a long way :wink:

Cheers.

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