Taskbar Icon Displacement/Duplication After System Upgrades on Wayland-based DEs

Issue Description

After upgrading my Linux distribution, I consistently encounter taskbar (Dock/Panel) icon-related issues:

1. Icon Disappearance:

   • Applications pinned to the taskbar vanish after reboot or compositor restart.
   • Example: Firefox/Chromium icons disappear from KDE Plasma's panel.

2. Icon Misalignment:

   • Icons shift positions arbitrarily (e.g., a terminal icon moves from slot 3 to slot 7).

3. Duplicate Icons:

   • A single application spawns multiple identical icons (e.g., 3 Discord icons for 1 running instance).

---

Proposed Actions

1. Protocol Standardization:

   • Add mandatory persistent_id fields in icon metadata to track positions.

2. Compositor Fixes:

   • Implement upgrade-safe icon position caching (e.g., ~/.config/icon-positions.json).
   • Add sanity checks to merge/remove duplicate icons by app_id/desktop_file.

---

Request: Could the Wayland community prioritize fixes for taskbar icon stability in the protocols?

What you describe just sound like behaviors (whether features or bugs) in the taskbar/dock implementation you're using. The protocols here do not dictate what the user experience of a dock or taskbar should be, they just provide means of implementing the functionality.

It is only a protocol issue if the protocols are currently insufficient or impractical for implementing the functionality. As a good rule of thumb, start by filing issues towards your implementation you experience issues with, and escalate to wayland-protocols only if a protocol shortcoming is discovered.

closed