Description
After performing a major version upgrade from Fedora Silverblue 44 to Fedora Silverblue 45, the GNOME Shell App Grid exhibits a noticeable delay when loading application icons upon every fresh boot or reboot.
When entering the App Grid immediately after logging in, all application placeholders appear as blank/grayed-out squares. The actual application icons take roughly 5–10 seconds to populate sequentially.
Environment Details
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OS: Fedora Silverblue 45 (OSTree)
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Desktop Environment: GNOME Shell (Wayland session)
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Upgrade Path: Fedora Silverblue 44 $\rightarrow$ Fedora Silverblue 45
Steps to Reproduce
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Upgrade Fedora Silverblue 44 to 45 via
rpm-ostree rebase. -
Reboot into the Fedora 45 deployment and log into the user session.
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Open the App Grid (
Superkey or clicking “Show Apps”) immediately after startup.
Observed Behavior
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Application icons are blank or delayed, rendering sequentially over several seconds instead of appearing instantly.
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Flatpak exports seem to trigger fallback disk lookups rather than reading from a pre-compiled icon cache.
Expected Behavior
- Application icons should render instantly from the binary icon cache upon opening the App Grid.
Troubleshooting / Workaround Performed
Running the following commands to regenerate the system Flatpak icon cache and purge user shell caches does not resolves the issue:
Bash
# Rebuild Flatpak icon cache
sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -f /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/icons/hicolor/
# Clear stale GNOME Shell cache
rm -rf ~/.cache/gnome-shell/ ~/.cache/gnome-software/
$ journalctl --user -f /usr/bin/gnome-shell
Aug 25 20:22:58 fedora gnome-shell[6944]: Obtained a high priority EGL context
Aug 25 20:22:58 fedora gnome-shell[6944]: Using public X11 display :0, (using unix:/tmp/.X11-unix/X1 for managed services)
Aug 25 20:22:58 fedora gnome-shell[6944]: Using Wayland display name 'wayland-0'
Aug 25 20:22:58 fedora gnome-shell[6944]: Unset XDG_SESSION_ID, getCurrentSessionProxy() called outside a user session. Asking logind directly.
Aug 25 20:22:58 fedora gnome-shell[6944]: Registering session with GDM
Aug 25 20:22:58 fedora gnome-shell[6944]: Will monitor session 2
Aug 25 20:22:58 fedora gnome-shell[6944]: Error looking up permission: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.portal.Error.NotFound: No entry for geolocation
Aug 25 20:23:00 fedora gnome-shell[6944]: GNOME Shell started at Tue Aug 25 2026 20:22:58 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time)
Aug 25 20:23:00 fedora gnome-shell[6944]: Registering display with GDM
Aug 25 20:23:24 fedora gnome-shell[6944]: Could not create bluez object manager: Timeout was reached
$ journalctl --user -b 0 | grep -Ei "glycin|bwrap|librsvg|icon|pixbuf" | tail -n 30
Aug 25 20:22:59 fedora gnome-software[7281]: gs_icon_downloader_update_priority: assertion 'GS_IS_ICON_DOWNLOADER (self)' failed
Aug 25 20:23:12 fedora org.mozilla.firefox.desktop[9667]: [Parent 2, Main Thread] WARNING: Could not load a pixbuf from icon theme.
Aug 25 20:23:12 fedora org.mozilla.firefox.desktop[9667]: This may indicate that pixbuf loaders or the mime database could not be found.: 'glib warning', file checkouts/gecko/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:200
Aug 25 20:23:12 fedora firefox-bin[9667]: Could not load a pixbuf from icon theme.
This may indicate that pixbuf loaders or the mime database could not be found.