Upgraded to Ubuntu 26.04 – Slowness due to GNOME Crash

    paige
    Just Another Web Paige

    I upgraded my desktop system to Ubuntu 26.04 and noticed slowness in loading apps in my GNOME session. I had Claude Code investigate and it came up with this script which fixes the error.

    #!/bin/bash
# Fix for xdg-desktop-portal-gnome bug in Ubuntu 26.04
# The GNOME portal crashes due to schema name mismatch (wm-preferences vs wm.preferences)
# This script masks the broken GNOME portal and uses the GTK portal instead

set -e

echo "Checking xdg-desktop-portal-gnome status..."

if systemctl --user is-active xdg-desktop-portal-gnome &>/dev/null; then
    echo "GNOME portal is running - no fix needed"
    exit 0
fi

if systemctl --user is-enabled xdg-desktop-portal-gnome 2>/dev/null | grep -q masked; then
    echo "GNOME portal is already masked"
    exit 0
fi

# Check if it's failing with the known error
if journalctl --user -u xdg-desktop-portal-gnome -b --no-pager 2>/dev/null | grep -q "wm-preferences.*not installed"; then
    echo "Detected known schema bug in xdg-desktop-portal-gnome"
    echo "Masking broken GNOME portal and using GTK portal instead..."

    systemctl --user mask xdg-desktop-portal-gnome
    systemctl --user restart xdg-desktop-portal

    echo "Fix applied. App launching should be faster now."
    echo ""
    echo "To undo later (when Ubuntu fixes the bug):"
    echo "  systemctl --user unmask xdg-desktop-portal-gnome"
    echo "  systemctl --user restart xdg-desktop-portal"
else
    echo "GNOME portal is not running, but the known schema bug was not detected."
    echo "Check manually with: journalctl --user -u xdg-desktop-portal-gnome -b"
    exit 1
fi