I installed regular gnome-software to be able to install Flatpaks as well. Right after I did that, all was fine: I could see both "Software" and "Ubuntu software" in the launcher overview and launch either of them.
However, after a restart, I could no longer see Ubuntu Software, and installed Snaps weren't present in the menu anymore either. I have since uninstalled gnome-software, un- and re-installed both Ubuntu Software (snap remove snap-store and snap install snap-store) and the Snap app I'm testing with, and restarted, but I still can't see them.
Why did that happen?
As requested by pomsky:
$ ls /var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/
chromium_chromium.desktop
gnome-system-monitor_gnome-system-monitor.desktop
keepassxc_keepassxc.desktop
mimeinfo.cache
signal-desktop_signal-desktop.desktop
skype_skypeforlinux.desktop
snap-store_snap-store.desktop
spotify_spotify.desktop
ubports-installer_ubports-installer.desktop
and
$ echo $XDG_DATA_DIRS
/home/vincent/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share/:/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/:/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/
Best Answer
The
.desktoplaunchers associated to the Snap Store and other snap applications are present in your/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/directory. Under a normal circumstance GNOME Shell should be able to detect them and show them in the application list. But the output ofecho $XDG_DATA_DIRSshows that this directory is not a part of yourXDG_DATA_DIRS. So add the/var/lib/snapd/desktop/directory to yourXDG_DATA_DIRS.Also as a workaround, you may copy the required
.desktoplaunchers from/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/to your~/.local/share/applications/directory. For example, for the Snap Store app, you can do that by running