Ubuntu 25.04 Manage page no icons for installed apps

[corradoventu]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues and found none matching what I'm reporting.

Bug Description

Ubuntu 25.04 app-center in Manage page app icons are missing for installed apps.

Steps to reproduce the behavior

open App Center, go to Manage, installed apps have no icons. If i uninstall let’s say firefox and reinstall, the icon appears. On the explore, featured, productivity etc. app discovery menus, icons appear normally.

Expected behavior

No response

Ubuntu release

None

What architecture are you using?

None

System info

No response

Additional context

No response

[corradoventu]

See also https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/25-04-app-center-manage-page-missing-installed-apps-icons/59969/1

[rubi1200]

Tested a fresh install of 25.04 in a VM and even purging and reinstalling does not fix the issue.

The only icon that appears is for the snap store itself.

[d-loose]

Thanks for the report - to me this looks like an issue in snapd, since the information we receive via the API looks incomplete/inconsistent. Here's a comparison of the json data received from /v2/snaps/desktop-security-center on a machine recently updated to plucky vs a newly installed one (both using snapd 2.67.1, though):

diff --git 1/new-install.json 2/old.json
index 6f3bf4a..725b0f6 100644
--- 1/new-install.json
+++ 2/old.json
@@ -4,10 +4,12 @@
 	"status": "OK",
 	"result": {
 		"id": "FppXWunWzuRT2NUT9CwoBPNJNZBYOCk0",
-		"summary": "Desktop Security Center",
-		"description": "Security Center UI for the desktop",
+		"title": "Security Center",
+		"summary": "The desktop Security Center will provide easy-to-access security features in Ubuntu.",
+		"description": "The desktop Security Center will provide easy-to-access security features in Ubuntu. \n\nIn this first release, users can enable experimental application permissions prompting for fine-grained control over how apps access files and folders.\n\nPermissions management requires the supporting `prompting-client` snap to be installed alongside; this is included by default on Ubuntu 24.10 and future releases. \n\nNew features will be added in coming releases.",
+		"icon": "https://dashboard.snapcraft.io/site_media/appmedia/2024/08/Padlock.svg.png",
 		"installed-size": 12320768,
-		"install-date": "2025-04-14T07:34:05+02:00",
+		"install-date": "2025-04-08T13:42:33.471570431+02:00",
 		"name": "desktop-security-center",
 		"publisher": {
 			"id": "canonical",
@@ -20,7 +22,7 @@
 		"type": "app",
 		"base": "core22",
 		"version": "0+git.f7ad73a",
-		"channel": "",
+		"channel": "latest/edge",
 		"tracking-channel": "1/stable/ubuntu-25.04",
 		"ignore-validation": false,
 		"revision": "59",
@@ -38,13 +40,31 @@
 		"license": "GPL-3.0",
 		"mounted-from": "/var/lib/snapd/snaps/desktop-security-center_59.snap",
 		"links": {
-			"issues": [
-				"https://github.com/canonical/desktop-security-center/issues"
-			],
-			"source-code": [
-				"https://github.com/canonical/desktop-security-center.git"
+			"website": [
+				"https://github.com/canonical/desktop-security-center"
 			]
 		},
-		"contact": ""
+		"contact": "",
+		"website": "https://github.com/canonical/desktop-security-center",
+		"media": [
+			{
+				"type": "icon",
+				"url": "https://dashboard.snapcraft.io/site_media/appmedia/2024/08/Padlock.svg.png",
+				"width": 512,
+				"height": 512
+			},
+			{
+				"type": "screenshot",
+				"url": "https://dashboard.snapcraft.io/site_media/appmedia/2024/09/Security_Center_1-1726051348.png",
+				"width": 1808,
+				"height": 1408
+			},
+			{
+				"type": "screenshot",
+				"url": "https://dashboard.snapcraft.io/site_media/appmedia/2024/09/Security_Center_2-1726051348.png",
+				"width": 1808,
+				"height": 1408
+			}
+		]
 	}
 }

[olivercalder]

Thanks for the report! I think what's going on here is that those snaps are pre-seeded in the plucky iso, so there hasn't been a snap install/refresh of them yet. The auxiliary store info (including icon URL) is fetched as part of the install/refresh, so it's not yet present.

To test this theory, could you (@d-loose in the VM) please do the following:

1. sudo snap refresh --channel=latest/stable snapd --- (refresh snapd, which was pre-seeded) I predict this shouldn't change anything (except potentially fetch icon for the snapd snap), please confirm that other snap icons remain not visible
2. sudo snap refresh --channel=latest/beta firefox --- (refresh a pre-seeded snap to a different channel) I predict this should result in firefox having an icon but not other snaps
3. sudo snap install spot --- (install new snap which was not pre-seeded) I think this should result in spot also having an icon, but again not others
4. sudo snap refresh --- (refresh everything) potentially this could result in all snap icons being visible, but I'm not certain

[corradoventu]

On my Plucky (fresh install from ISO) after sudo snap refresh --channel=latest/beta firefox the firefox icon is visible.
After installing spot and snap refresh nothing changed.
so now I have firefox icon and snap-store icon due to remove+install snap-store.

[olivercalder]

Thanks for testing! Just to clarify, did spot have an icon?

[corradoventu]

Sorry, Yes spot have an icon.

[d-loose]

1. `sudo snap refresh --channel=latest/stable snapd` --- (refresh snapd, which was pre-seeded) I predict this shouldn't change anything (except potentially fetch icon for the `snapd` snap), please confirm that other snap icons remain not visible

Correct, nothing has changed.

2. `sudo snap refresh --channel=latest/beta firefox` --- (refresh a pre-seeded snap to a different channel) I predict this should result in firefox having an icon but not other snaps

I ran this for the pre-seeded desktop-security-center instead, since firefox already had a pending update and all metadata was shown correctly. Updating the snap populated the metadata cache and didn't change anything for the other snaps, as you predicted.

3. `sudo snap install spot` --- (install new snap which was not pre-seeded) I think this should result in `spot` also having an icon, but again not others

Also correct - the newly installed snap comes with all the metadata, nothing changes for the rest.

4. `sudo snap refresh` --- (refresh everything) potentially this could result in all snap icons being visible, but I'm not certain

This didn't populate the metadata cache of the other seeded snaps which didn't have any pending updates.

[olivercalder]

Got it, thank you both! So it sounds like that's the problem: pre-seeded snaps don't have auxiliary store info seeded, and it's only populated once the snap is successfully refreshed.

Some possibilities:

• ideally, it would be great if we could find a way to seed the auxinfo in the iso as well
• otherwise, the workaround is to snap refresh --channel=latest/beta <snap-name> for each pre-seeded snap, then snap revert <snap-name> to get back to the channel which was shipped at install
  • there's a bit of annoying complexity here because some snaps (e.g. snap-store) ship with tracks other than latest by default, and latest/stable is fundamentally different than e.g. 2/stable.
• worst case, plucky is very new, but once snaps have updates available which are newer than the revision shipped in the iso, autorefresh or a single snap refresh should fix the icons
• a potentially more involved solution could be for the snap-store to try to look for the snap icon via /v2/icons/<snap-name>/icon, which serves the snap icon from inside the snap itself, but this has a few problems
  • a significant portion of snaps do not ship icons locally this way (though on snapd 2.69+, after a refresh, snapd will locally cache the store icon for the snap after a refresh and fall back to it if there's no icon in the snap itself)
  • the local snap icon could differ from the icon in the store listing (though this is rare)