Tray and Menu Favorites icons wrong after 0.94.1 install

[LorenAmelang]

Sorry I didn't respond before the original Discussion was closed. Too many bigger problems...

The history is visible as:
TriliumNext/Notes#2323

I just dug into this again. The last comment to the previous Discussion was correct, the backslashes in
/home/loren/.local/share/applications/trilium-notes.desktop:

Icon=/home/loren/builds/TriliumNext/TriliumNext\ Notes-linux-x64/icon.png
Exec=/home/loren/builds/TriliumNext/TriliumNext\ Notes-linux-x64/trilium

are necessary.

When I went to try that, I found the Exec line had two backslashes - no idea how.
I tried adding two to the Icon line, which made the (wrong) Start menu Favorites icon disappear. I changed both lines back to one backslash, removed and re-added the Favorites icon. and it went back to the generic Gnome icon.

I right clicked TriliumNext Notes in the Start menu, and chose Launcher Properties.
The Command field was blank. It requires the backslash to enable the OK button:
/home/loren/builds/TriliumNext/TriliumNext\ Notes-linux-x64/trilium

Adding that command sort-of restored the Favorites icon. Icon.png is a transparent png file, and the background here is white, so it is barely visible. Seems maybe it should have a solid black background?

My tray icon is still generic.

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi @LorenAmelang! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the Trilium team.

The generic or missing tray and menu icons after 0.94.1 are caused by missing PNG icon assets in the Trilium package for Linux. The code and packaging scripts expect specific icon files, but these were not bundled after a recent repo restructuring, which leads to fallback or invisible icons in Gnome and other environments. There’s no official documentation or fix yet, but restoring the expected PNG icons and ensuring they’re referenced in the .desktop file would resolve this source.

For .desktop files, the standard way to handle paths with spaces is to either escape the space with a backslash (\ ) or enclose the path in quotes, but quoting is not always supported for the Icon field. If you use a backslash, make sure there’s only one. If the icon is transparent, it may be nearly invisible on light backgrounds—using a PNG with a solid background will improve visibility.

As a workaround, you can manually supply a suitable PNG icon (with a solid background if needed), place it in a path without spaces if possible, and update your .desktop file to point to it. The tray icon will remain generic until the missing assets are restored in the official package.

There’s no Trilium-specific documentation on .desktop syntax or icon best practices, so for persistent issues, refer to freedesktop.org’s .desktop entry spec for more details.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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