Ubuntu – No applications in Dash

unity-dash

I think that, due to latest Trusty s/w updates, none of my applications (including standard Trusty installed ones) are available from the Dash! Or have I done something to cause this? The Applications category is enabled on Categories & Sources.
PS this is only happening on my desktop i.e. not on my laptop. Both computers had clean installs of Trusty.

Best Answer

This issue was reported in Ubuntu Forums in 2011. The problem appears to be a corrupted .cache. I removed $HOME/.cache and after a log out/log in, dash went back to its normal behaviour.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – All Applications Disappear in the Dash

Run
rm ~/.cache/software-center -R and then : open the terminal hit Alt-F2
run the following command unity --reset

Ubuntu – Applications don’t appear in the Dash (14.04)

As it is only constrained to your user account, it must have something to do with your user.

Maybe one of the .desktop files in your home folder is tripping the launcher up? Can you try moving the files in these folders all somewhere else:

/home/<youruser>/.gnome/apps/
/home/<youruser>/.local/usr/share/applications/

e.g.

$ mkdir backup_local
$ mkdir backup_gnome
$ mv .local/share/applications/*.desktop backup_local/
$ mv .gnome/apps/*.desktop backup_gnome/

Then logout, login and see if it changed anything? You can always move them back in if it didn't help. If it did help, try moving them in one by one to which file was the culprit.

EDIT: You can find out which one was malformed:

Install the desktop-file-utils package:

sudo apt-get install desktop-file-utils

Check each of the .desktop files for validity using desktop-file-validate:
```
desktop-file-validate .local/share/applications/*.desktop
desktop-file-validate .gnome/apps/*.desktop
```
Or of course at the different location if you already moved it. It will print nothing if all files are OK. If any of the files are malformed, it will print one error message per line.

You might also want to check the other desktop files for good measure:
```
desktop-file-validate /usr/share/applications/*.desktop
```

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – All Applications Disappear in the Dash

Ubuntu – Applications don’t appear in the Dash (14.04)

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