Settings window doesn't show up on Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS

I have a problem with Settings window not showing up when I open it on my laptop.

Whenever I start the application, even from Terminal with command gnome-control-center, I can see the Settings icon showing up in the sidebar, but no window appearing on my screen. I see something starts appearing on the right side of the screen, but it disappears almost immediately.

If I right click on the sidebar icon, and select All Windows, I can see the window preview, but even if I click on it, nothing happens. I have already tried to see if it is inside a different work area, and also to open it in a new area - same behaviour.

I'm running Ubuntu on my laptop, no additional display present. I'm attaching a screenshot of the Settings icon on the side bar, and the response from gnome-control-center -v command.

settings icon

terminal diagnostic

Any idea how to fix that? I hope you could help me as I'm pretty new to Ubuntu.


  1. Disable/remove all other workplaces except the current one and try again, if doesnt work or if the instance create a new workspace itself, then

  2. Remove and reinstall gnome-control-center using sudo apt-get remove --purge gnome-control-center and then install using sudo apt install gnome-control-center

  3. Reboot system

Caution: You may lose the trivial gnome settings you already applied.


In my case, the problem solved by updating my drivers through following command:

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

which selects recommended drivers for you.

OH, don't forget to restart!