Hi to everyone. I will try to explain the problems I’m having with the SNAP store.
I hope that the issues I’m having are common problems to other users as well, and therefore there is benefit in this discussion.
My main problem is that when I install a SNAP or an application from the terminal, it doesn’t show itself on the SNAP store, under installed. This makes it confusing for the average non-technical user to understand why it’s not there so that it can be uninstalled if necessary, which is often the case when you experiment with snaps.
Secondly, there are so many snaps that either don’t work when they are installed or they fail to show when they are installed! That it’s really frustrating for a user to see them all there. He loses confidence in installing things from the Snap store.
What Snaps are you trying to update/install? I can’t be of help, since I don’t use them, but sure enough, someone will come along to help you fix things.
I use Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS. There are so many, that I don’t remember them all. I was thinking that it might be that snap developers lose track and forget, or don’t care to update something. Many snaps at the store don’t work. You can see from the comments there that ppl have the same problem.
The last one, that is today a moment ago, was Ollama. It finished installation, but did not appear anywhere…
Moving to the Support and Help category, as neither issue currently seems detailed enough for discussion in the Snap-Store category.
Please try to reproduce the not-showing-installed behavior from a stock install of Ubuntu, or by using a LiveUSB’s “Try Ubuntu” environment. If you are able to reproduce the behavior in a clean environment, then please list the steps required for us to reproduce the behavior. Please be specific.
If I understand your issue you install a snap application from a terminal.
And the GUI snap store won’t update that it is installed?
Off the top of my head without much else to go off of.
I can only think that the Snap store will need to be shutdown and restarted to catch up with what the terminal side has accomplished see this it might help might not.
killall snap-store
or
sudo killall snap-store
then
sudo snap refresh
Sorry for the off the cuff response. I’m in hopes that it will work for a resolution to your issue
Thanks for the reply.
It seems to have fixed part of the problem of apps appearing on the snap store. I have an app called “entangle”. It appears on the menu, it opens ok, but it doesn’t show under the installed list. When I search for the snap, it appears but with the install option active. For fun I clicked on it, and now it appears ok. But that is not a proper procedure for a user to follow. I need to try this with all the snaps…the time consumption is simply unnecessary.
This suggests that entangle may have been installed using some other (non-snap, non-deb) method.
Example: Flatpaks will show exactly the behavior you describe: Not showing as ‘installed’ in the Snap Store. Entangle’s flatpak method of install is widely circulated on the internet.
Do you now have two copies of entangle installed?
Let’s find out. Please show us the complete output of: whereis entangle
With Linux things improve over time. Software is released before it is finished and polished. This is the way things are done. The user becomes the tester.
You are using Ubuntu 22.04.5. Things are better in Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS. I do not know if your issue is resolved but I can tell you this: the App Store, as it is now called, is much improved. It will offer snap applications and also Debian (deb) applications.
Also keep in mind that the maintainer of the snap has a lot of responsibility for making sure his application works well with the operating system.
You have an opportunity to help in making improvements by reporting the issue (bug) to the maintainers of those particular snap apps that you are complaining about.
