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wrh1728

Member

Registered: 2020-12-15

Posts: 43

Duplicated entries in Xfce Menu

I am running Xfce 4.16 under Slackware 15.0. The problem that I have is the following:

I have upgraded my Xfce version a number of times, while keeping my Xfce configuration files in my home directory all along. As a result, I am getting duplicated entries in submenus within the main Xfce menu - I am not sure about the exact nomenclature, but when I say 'main Xfce menu' I mean the one that is placed by default at the leftmost position in the panel at the top of the screen.

When I click on this menu I obtain a list of submenus: Settings, Accessories, Development, etc. When I click on any of those submenus I get a list of applications. For example, clicking on Accessories elicits the following list:

Akonady Tray
Application Finder
Ark
Ark
Bulk Rename
Character Map
Clipboard Manager
Fcitx
File Manager
Filelight
Filelight

etc.

As you can see, Ark and Filelight are duplicated. There are many more cases of repeated entries under Accessories, and also under many of the the other submenus in the main Xfce menu. As I mentioned above, this seems to have happened because of Xfce upgrades while keeping my local configuration files - at least, that's the only thing I can think of.

My question is, how can I remove those duplicated entries?

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: Duplicated entries in Xfce Menu

What is the contents of the ~/.config/menus directory? Have you edited the menu at all?

You can try renaming ~/.config/menus (probably good to log out and back in again) to see if the menu files are the issue. You can always rename the folder back to return to the previous state.

The other to look at would be in the /usr/share/applications folder for files containing duplicate "Name=" entries. Running a command like this will show them:

fgrep -ri "Name=Ark" /usr/share/applications

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wrh1728

Member

Registered: 2020-12-15

Posts: 43

Re: Duplicated entries in Xfce Menu

The contents of ~/.config/menus are the following:

applications-merged/        applications.menu      settings.menu
applications-merged.old/  applications.menu.bak  xfce-applications.menu

I renamed ~/.config/menus to ~/.config/old.menus and exited my Xfce session. After launching a new one, the duplicated entries are still there. as for the command that you suggested, here's what I am getting:

# fgrep -ri "Name=Ark" /usr/share/applications
/usr/share/applications/org.kde.ark.desktop:Name=Ark

The same command applied to ~/.config/menus (before I renamed it) returns nothing.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: Duplicated entries in Xfce Menu

How about:

fgrep -ri "Name=Ark" ~/.local/share/applications

and

fgrep -ri "Name=Ark" /usr/local/share/applications

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wrh1728

Member

Registered: 2020-12-15

Posts: 43

Re: Duplicated entries in Xfce Menu

$ fgrep -ri "Name=Ark" ~/.local/share/applications
/home/xyz/.local/share/applications/kde4/ark.desktop:Name=Ark

$ fgrep -ri "Name=Ark" /usr/local/share/applications
grep: /usr/local/share/applications: No such file or directory

Which makes sense: there is not /usr/local/share/applications directory in my system.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: Duplicated entries in Xfce Menu

You have one desktop file titled "org.kde.ark.desktop"  (/usr/share/applications) and one titled "ark.desktop" in ~/.local/share/applications that point to the same package with the same name. That is why you have two instances in the menu. You should probably delete the one in ~/.local/share/applications and do the same for any duplicate entries you have.

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wrh1728

Member

Registered: 2020-12-15

Posts: 43

Re: Duplicated entries in Xfce Menu

Just another piece of information:

I created another account, and launched Xfce from it. There are no duplicated items in the Xfce menus, as described above, when using this account. Whatever is causing those duplicated entries when I log in as myself is peculiar to my account - but I don't know where or what to look for. In fact, I can't find anything in my home directory to justify the duplicates.

Take e.g. Filelight. This is under Xfce Menu -> Accessories, and there are two entries for it. Both of them launch the Filelight application all right. I did a search for the string 'Filelight' everywhere under .config and .local in my home directory. It appears nowhere under .config, and just in one file under .local, in share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop, as follows:

share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[bs]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[ca]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[ca@valencia]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[cs]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[da]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[de]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[el]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[en_GB]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[es]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[et]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[eu]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[fi]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[fr]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[ga]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[gl]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name

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=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[hu]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[ia]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[it]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[kk]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[km]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[ko]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[lt]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[lv]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[nb]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[nds]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[nl]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[pl]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[pt]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[pt_BR]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[ro]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[ru]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[sk]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[sl]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[sr@ijekavianlatin]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[sr@latin]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[sv]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[th]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[tr]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[ug]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[uk]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[wa]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[x-test]=xxFilelightxx
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[zh_CN]=Filelight
share/applications/kde4/filelight.desktop:Name[zh_TW]=Filelight

Where on earth is Xfce is getting the information from that tells it to have two entries for Filelight in the Xfce main menu?

Last edited by wrh1728 (2022-03-17 17:03:38)

wrh1728

Member

Registered: 2020-12-15

Posts: 43

Re: Duplicated entries in Xfce Menu

I've just had a breakthrough, but I don't know why it works.

In my .local/share directory I had (among other things) two subdirectories: applications and desktop-directories. The first one contained a hodge-podge of .desktop files, to do mostly with Wine and many other applications - but nothing to do with the duplicate ones. In desktop-directories I had a number of .directory files (and they are files all right, not directories) mostly to do with Wine. Again, nothing to do with the repeated entries the main Xfce menu. I renamed those directories as old.applications and old.desktop-directories, restarted my Xfce session, and the duplicate entries are gone, at long last!

I have no clue why this works. Since the contents of the directories mentioned above are now irrelevant to me, I am happy. I still would like to know why they caused the problem in the first place, bearing in mind that the don't seem to contain anything that may trigger it.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,485

Re: Duplicated entries in Xfce Menu

I renamed those directories as old.applications and old.desktop-directories, restarted my Xfce session, and the duplicate entries are gone, at long last!

That's what I was trying to get you to do but one file at a time in case you wanted to keep some. Rename the directories does it all at once.

I have no clue why this works. Since the contents of the directories mentioned above are now irrelevant to me, I am happy. I still would like to know why they caused the problem in the first place, bearing in mind that the don't seem to contain anything that may trigger it.

For the instance of ark, the package probably changed the name of the desktop file from ark.desktop to org.kde.ark.desktop while you had a copy of the original file in ~/.local/share/applications. The same reason probably applies to all of the other duplicates.

Its good that the issue is resolved.

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