Ubuntu 20.04 desktop files and icons missing

Solution 1:

This worked for me:

• Install gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons:

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons

• Log out of Gnome.
• Log back in.

Solution 2:

The problem might be that the installation did not go according to plans, not to worry though! The simplest (and most effective) operation you can do is:

sudo apt dist-upgrade

This will automatically install / update / repair all the needed packages for your current version.

Solution 3:

I'm on stock Ubuntu 20.04.2, fresh install.

I also noted out of the blue, that the contents of ~/Desktop failed to show up on the desktop.

So I went ahead and enabled the Desktop Icons extension in Tweaks, and nothing happened. After I have restarted the Gnome Shell with Alt+F2 + r, and still no icons, I went back to Tweaks only to find the Desktop Icons extension disabled again. So I repeated the cycle, this time tweaking on the extension's preferences, hoping that it would unstuck the glitch somehow. No luck, the Desktop Icons extension kept disabling itself on each restart of Gnome Shell.

Then I looked in dconf-editor, in org.gnome.shell enabled-extensions: "desktop-icons@csoriano" was in there, as it was supposed to be. Yet the problem persisted.

Then:

I do have an additional piece of GUI window, that is called, plainly, Extensions in the apps / activies overview. It's a single window, and looks very similar to Gnome Tweaks' "Extensions" tab UI. Only, this one takes precedence over the one in Tweaks.

I don't know where this Extensions app originates from: whether it's installed on 20.04 by default, or maybe I have obtained it by installing the gnome-shell-extensions package.

Anyways, enabling Desktop Icons in the plain Extensions app solved everything.