"Keep in Dock" Not Working For Most Applications

[sorceresslucienne]

What Happened?

Hi,

I've installed elementary OS on two machines so far and on both, in Pantheon I'm not able to pin most things to the dock - on reboot it just resets and they're gone. I was able to remove items from the dock, it remembers that. I was able to pin the terminal to the dock, it remembers that. Browsers, chat applications, Steam, literally anything else unpins once I log out.

elementary OS is up to date.

Thanks!
-Eri

https://github.com/orgs/elementary/discussions/867

Steps to Reproduce

1. Pin pretty much any application to the dock
2. Restart your computer
3. Application is no longer pinned to dock

Expected Behavior

"Keep on Dock" option should function as intended

OS Version

8.x (Circe)

OS Architecture

amd64 (on most hardwares)

Session Type

Classic and Secure Sessions (I have tested in both)

Software Version

Latest release (I have run all updates)

Log Output

Hardware Info

No response

[danirabbit]

Hey just to be clear are you using the "Keep in Dock" menu item in the Dock itself or from the Applications menu?

[sorceresslucienne]

Hey just to be clear are you using the "Keep in Dock" menu item in the Dock itself or from the Applications menu?

I'm right-clicking on applications and selecting "Keep in Dock" from the context menu that pops up. I've done this on applications that I've had open that show up in the dock, as well as from the application search menu in the upper-left corner of the screen.

[danirabbit]

Okay cool. I think this issue is distinct from #348 so I'm not going to mark it as a duplicate

[LuminousHustler]

I cannot reproduce this issue with either flatpaks, native packages, or applications installed via apt. However I should note that I only use the classic session and not the secure session (reasons unrelated to this issue.)

That said, could you try to test this with a second account on your computer? It would be helpful to know if the problem follows the user/session or if it's a global issue that's affecting all accounts on your machine. Just throwing it out there of course, but if you'd like to test what I'm asking:

1. Login as your normal user account that's experiencing the problem, into the classic (or secure) session.
2. Go to Settings > User Accounts
3. On the bottom-left click "Create User Account"
4. Create an account, and set the Account Type to "Standard User"
5. Once complete, restart your computer
6. Login to the newly created account, and launch one of the troublesome applications.
7. Right click on the application's icon on the dock and click "Keep in Dock"
8. Once complete, restart your computer
9. Login to the newly created account, and check if the icon remains in the dock.
10. If not, open the "Applications" menu and right click one of the troublesome applications. From the context menu that pops up, click "Keep in Dock".
11. Once complete, restart your computer
12. Login to the newly created account, and check if the icon remains in the dock.

Thank you for taking the time to do this, it will help narrow down the scope for investigating/troubleshooting your issue further

EDIT: Once complete, feel free to remove the newly created user account from your system

[LuminousHustler]

@danirabbit I was able to reproduce this, using a bone-stock, fully updated fresh installation on Nov 11th. The only change made to the system other then a full update + reboot was the installation of the Firefox snap.

This bug is only triggered when the user selects the button in the Applications menu. This happens in both Classic and Secure sessions. The icon will appear, but if the computer is restarted (although now that I think about it, it's probably when the user logs out) the icon disappears.

My gut tells me that there is some issue with writing the user's preferences to disk when the button is pressed from the Application menu.

....but that's where my skills end. Hopefully someone else can fix this bug because I.....well can't to be honest

NOTE: The screenshot wasn't taken from the VM, it was the host computer (hence the other apps)

[danirabbit]

@LuminousHustler I proposed a branch that I'm hoping may have a positive effect here. Can you build and install it and see if it resolves the issue for you? elementary/applications-menu#680

[sorceresslucienne]

Just adding a note here: the "work-around" for this currently is to open an application, right-click on it from the dock itself, and select "Keep in Dock" from there.

Adding it from the Applications menu doesn't work, as is described above (either via searching for an application or scrolling over to it).

Glad there is at least a way to do this currently. :-)

[danirabbit]

@sorceresslucienne if you could try building and testing with elementary/applications-menu#680 that would be helpful as well :) I'd love to get that merged and if someone can confirm that it resolves an issue for them that would really help

[LuminousHustler]

I cloned and installed the https://github.com/elementary/applications-menu/tree/danirabbit/app-menu-fixes with the help of @ryonakano. However there seems to be a weird regression that is intermittent and prevented me from running the 12 steps I'd outlined earlier. Before testing this, I fully updated my system again and cloned the repo + installed the dock.

Here are my findings:

1. When you right click on an app in the menu and click "keep in dock" it will appear in the dock
2. However if you right click on any application that's already in the dock, the icon will disappear from the dock
3. If you do step 2, the dock gets unhappy/unstable it seems. Because if you logout, any app that you click "keep in dock" on in step 1 will disappear

Straight up speculation:

• Is it possible that the default state of the context menu is to have the "keep in dock" setting off. So if you right click on an app in the menu that's already in the dock because you just put it there will trigger a race condition that breaks the dock and prevents it from saving anything that was changed while the user was logged in?

2025-11-15.09-11-15.mp4

[LuminousHustler]

@danirabbit using my new found skills at building software (i.e. just doing what you told me to do in discord) I'm 95% sure I have the latest builds of the dock and the application-menu installed on my testing VM. Just to make sure I didn't screw anything up, I've attached the ninja build output for both the dock and the application menu.

app_menu_build.txt
dock_build.txt

Anyways, it seems like there is some progress to report but one bug still remains. I've tried to formalize my testing procedure a bit so I know it's apples to apples between builds and relatively easy for a 3rd party to reproduce....as opposed to watching my videos and trying to figure out what's going on.

In summary, These are the 4 tests that I use to test this feature:

1. Using the application menu – Click on 3 applications that are not running/icon is not present on the dock already. Using the context menu I clicked “Keep in Dock”.

• Logout/Log back in – The relevant icons have disappeared from the dock
  - [X] Status: Failed

2. Using the application menu – Click on 3 applications that are running/icon is present on the dock already. Using the context menu I clicked “Keep in Dock”.

• Logout/Log back in – The relevant icons stay on the the dock – Progress!
  - [✓] Status: Passed

3. Using the dock – Click on 3 applications that are not running but the icon is present on the dock (i.e. pinned already.) Using the context menu I unchecked “Keep in Dock”.

• Logout/Log back in – The icons are removed from the dock as expected
  - [✓ ] Status: Passed

4. Using the dock – I opened 3 applications from the application menu so that the icon is present on the dock. Using the context menu I clicked “Keep in Dock”.

• Logout/Log back in – The icons remain on the dock
  - [✓ ] Status: Passed

[danirabbit]

@LuminousHustler I also recently opened #508

Can you see if that changes anything for you?

[danirabbit]

I'm going to move this back to the Dock since it seems this is a dock issue after all