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XFCE4 desktop icons no longer persist positions after 4.20.2 update

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XFCE4 desktop icons no longer persist positions after 4.20.2 update

At some point in the last few weeks, an XFCE4 update changed how desktop icon coords are stored and restored. I spent considerable time debugging this without identifying the cause.

System: Void, runit, XFCE 4.20.2, HD 3840×2160 HDMI-1

Symptom: Desktop icons set to default grid (1 of 8 options/"gravity"s) on reboot/resume. Previously, user-selected positions persisted.

The plausible suspect: ~/.config/xfce4/desktop/icons.screen0.yaml, which (seemingly) stores icon coords (row/col), removable devs w/last-seen timestamps, log of every file, directory, and UUID ever on the desktop, e.g items deleted last year.

Early attempts to wrangle this nasty yaml involved scripts for:

Backing it up with my preferred positions and overwriting the dictator version on resume =fail.

Applying chattr +i to make it immutable before suspend =fail.

Modifying it directly and forcing "xfdesktop --reload" =fail. Icon mutiny.

Here may be a clue. Editing the yaml whilst xfdesktop is running apparently produces no change to positions. This implies xfdesktop doesn't read the yaml to decide icon position at runtime; it writes the yaml after deciding positions. The yaml seems a log of an xfdesktop decision rather than an instruction.

I also probed xfconf, where I found no auto-arrange, sort-by, or position coordinate keys. All icon-related keys are style=2, gravity=0, and font/size/spacing/color preferences. The reset isn't caused by a toggle.

I corrected ghost monitor entries in xfconf. The display was registered under three IDs: monitor0 (generic fallback), monitorHDMI1 (no hyphen), and monitorHDMI-1 (correct). Purging the ghost entries, and separately adding a missing hyphen in displays.xml (HDMI1 > HDMI-1 to match xrandr's reported connector name), produced one successful logout/login with positions preserved, but the problem returned upon next resume.

After resume, with icons in dictator positions, I ran:

    killall xfdesktop && xfdesktop &
Icons remained in the reset/default arrangement.

This suggests the resume hook isn't the failure point. If the yaml contained valid positions and xfdesktop read them at startup, a clean restart would restore correct placement. The reset may happen somewhere inside xfdesktop's domain, independent of suspend/resume.

Speculative hippopotamus, or AI-Assisted conjecture:

xfdesktop 4.20.2 introduced a column boundary check fix in xfdesktop_icon_view_unplace_item(). Based on behavior, this function (or something upstream of it) now triggers a full position recalculation at startup rather than loading stored positions. The yaml is written afterward, reflecting the recalculated result, which is why it always appears "correct" after the fact but does not survive a restart.

What I haven't yet done, and probably won't, due to previous experience in that neighborhood, is file a bug for xfdesktop4.20.2. Then why would I bother here, one might ask... Because I am weird.

Sidenote on data retention:

Separately from the icon bug, xfdesktop writes unnecessary persistent user activity data by default:

icons.screen0.yaml retains obsolete entries for deleted files and unmounted drives, I think, indefinitely.

xfdesktop memory-maps gvfs-metadata logs (including deleted UUIDs), meaning it reads file and drive activity history beyond what I think icon rendering requires.

Clipman stores ~3-4MB of clipboard history by default and is a near-mandatory XFCE dependency, with, to me, no clear control option to disable it.

None of that is directly related to the icon bug, but perhaps worth etching in the ether for those interested.

And finally, something I've not yet tried:

    strace -e trace=openat,read,close -o /tmp/xfd-trace.log xfdesktop --no-daemon

    grep -i yaml /tmp/xfd-trace.log
Note that the above command may result in a necessary detour of your workflow.
Discussion 1 comments · 4 points · eth0up · 2026-06-30
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