How to show desktop items on Ubuntu 20.04?

I recently upgraded from 18.04 to 20.04 but all my desktop items have disappeared from the Desktop (they are still in /home/username/Desktop though).

When I search the internet for how to show them, they suggest using Extensions under the GNOME Tweaks app, but the button to "show desktop items" is not there for me.

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How can I show the items in my Desktop folder on the actual desktop again?

Solution 1:

It appears as if the upgrade did not go well. In Ubuntu 18.04, the file manager nautilus was still managing the desktop. In 20.04, by default, desktop icons are managed by a Gnome Shell extension, provided by a default system package gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons.

You could check whether that package is installed. If not, then you could install it and and enable the extension.

I do not, however, recommend that anymore. That extension is very limited in functionality. In the mean time, a forked, better maintained and especially more featured extension became available, Desktop Icons NG (DING) by rastersoft. Actually, that extension now has been adopted as the default handler for icons on the desktop in the latest Ubuntu 21.10. I therefore strongly recommend you also use that extension instead. It is also supported on the current LTS release of Ubuntu, 20.04. You can install it like any other extension from the Gnome Shell extensions website.