Element not showing anything on desktop

[glenson3377]

Steps to reproduce

i can see my stuff in element but i can stil interact with things

Outcome

What did you expect?

What happened instead?

Operating system

Arch linux

Application version

No response

How did you install the app?

flatpack

Homeserver

matrix

Will you send logs?

Yes

Also i only see this problem using x11 wayland doesnt seem to have this issue

[razerrazer]

Same issue here with fedora latest.

Element im.riot.Riot 1.11.47 stable flathub system

[dlehmenk]

I have the same issue as @razerrazer with Element 1.11.47 from flathub on fedora and it also happens with wayland, not just X11

[AndreasVerden]

EDIT: this "workaround" is less secure compared to the proper fix! see next comment.

same issue but in my case disabling Wayland (as shown below) and then fully restarting the app "fixes" the issue:

Element version: 1.11.47 (Flatpak)
Olm version: 3.2.14
OS: Fedora Linux 38 (Workstation Edition)

[Doomsdayrs]

same issue but in my case disabling Wayland (as shown below) and then fully restarting the app "fixes" the issue:

Element version: 1.11.47 (Flatpak) Olm version: 3.2.14 OS: Fedora Linux 38 (Workstation Edition)

A warning for anyone looking for a solution.

I highly recommend being extremely careful with this "workaround".

x11 is deprecated software, and has numerous security flaws that can lead to other applications snooping on your encrypted messages etc.

If you do decide to disable Wayland, Please make sure you susbscribe to this issue so you can know when to turn it back on.

Follow instructions in flathub/im.riot.Riot#411 to clear your shader cache for now. That will solve the issue.

[razerrazer]

same issue but in my case disabling Wayland (as shown below) and then fully restarting the app "fixes" the issue:
Element version: 1.11.47 (Flatpak) Olm version: 3.2.14 OS: Fedora Linux 38 (Workstation Edition)

A warning for anyone looking for a solution.

I highly recommend being extremely careful with this "workaround".

x11 is deprecated software, and has numerous security flaws that can lead to other applications snooping on your encrypted messages etc.

If you do decide to disable Wayland, Please make sure you susbscribe to this issue so you can know when to turn it back on.

Follow instructions in flathub/im.riot.Riot#411 to clear your shader cache for now. That will solve the issue.

Unfortunately even if i clear this folder, the issues is still there.

[Doomsdayrs]

Unfortunately even if i clear this folder, the issues is still there.

Did you try the other folder thats mentioned in the same thread

[razerrazer]

Unfortunately even if i clear this folder, the issues is still there.

Did you try the other folder thats mentioned in the same thread

I don't have that folder with riot.

~/.var/app/im.riot.Riot/config/
Element/ glib-2.0/ gtk-3.0/ pulse/

[Doomsdayrs]

@razerrazer Double check to make sure the app is 100% not running.

I found that as an issue on my desktop

[razerrazer]

@razerrazer Double check to make sure the app is 100% not running.

I found that as an issue on my desktop

After a reboot it is finally working, thank you!

[532910]

I had the similar issue but vice versa: only wayland gave a black screen and Xord worked fine. I navigated to ~/.config/Element and removed some files that I don't liked: caches, orphaned symlinks, window-state.json. And now it starts and works fine!!!

[damentz]

I had the similar issue but vice versa: only wayland gave a black screen and Xord worked fine. I navigated to ~/.config/Element and removed some files that I don't liked: caches, orphaned symlinks, window-state.json. And now it starts and works fine!!!

I believe this is the solution. Just purged all the cache folders for Element and now everything works.

Instructions for others, navigate to either ~/.config/Element or ~/.var/app/im.riot.Riot/config/Element, and rm -rf the following:

1. Cache
2. Code Cache
3. DawnCache
4. GPUCache

[532910]

This is not a solution, it's a workaround!

[damentz]

This is not a solution, it's a workaround!

Is it a solution if it's a one off occurrence that never occurs again? It would be a shame if a code change was introduced to fix this issue, but it no longer applies after everyone has upgraded and implemented the "workaround" that was only applicable between certain historical versions of Element.

If any changes are made by upstream, I think it would be to just to purge all caches between version changes, preemptively fixing any cache incompatibilities before users are affected. This of course doesn't take care of cache corruption when versions haven't changed, which may happen on distros where dependencies upgrade that the application depends on.

But should upstream developers be responsible for bugs introduced by distribution maintainers changing dependencies that produce these anomalies? Sort of reminds me of this: bottlesdevs/Bottles#2345

[532910]

There already two occurrences and I did this before, cache must be invalidated by computers, not people. This is a bug.

[razerrazer]

I agree with @532910, this is a bug, you shouldn't have to do this.

[t3chguy]

Duplicate of #1074