Just a little annoying issue that has buggered me for many months without any solution in the updates.
When launching the latest Fedora version of Thunderbird Flatpak (128.6.0esr), it does not display its usual stylised blue swallow icon, but instead the generic yellow “W” icon of Wayland.
This system runs Fedora Kinoite so the bug probable does not affect a RPM installation of Thunderbird. Additionally, there is also a Flatpak version of Thunderbird in Flathub which I have not tested whether this bug is present or not.
This issue appears to be due to how the Thunderbird Flatpak is packaged. Specifically, the Fedora provided Flatpak is not setting the expected desktop file metadata when it launches under Wayland. As a result, KDE Plasma falls back to the generic “W” icon for the running window, even though the menu and pinned icon are correct.
There is a specific commit to the underlying Flatpak container.yaml which may be responsible for this bug. The changing of the name string from “org.mozilla.thunderbird” to “net.thunderbird.Thunderbird“. This hint is also what is used to work around the bug:
- Start by opening Thunderbird
- Press Alt+F3
- Select More Actions > Configure Special Application Settings
- Add a new property called Desktop file name
- Select “Force” in the property drop-down
- Change the property value to “org.mozilla.Thunderbird“
- Click “OK“
Now the taskbar icon should be back to the same as the one in the menu, the correct Thunderbird blue swallow icon, with no sight of the wrong yellow Wayland “W” icon.