Invisible drop down menus

Support and Help
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Ubuntu Version

Ubuntu 26.04 LTS

Desktop Environment (if applicable)

GNOME

Problem Description

Open drop down menus in some applications > doesn’t appears

When opening drop down menus in some apps (arduino IDE,steam) it doesn’t show up but i can still click on the buttons.

What I’ve Tried

Troubleshooting that “works”: putting my system on zoom (Settings>accessibility> Zoom> desktop zoom) make the drop down menus show but when i do that i can’t resize anything (the mouse cursor doesn’t change to the arrows when on the edge of an app).
What i tried so far: Changing from Wayland to Xorg but it didn’t do anything

2

GNOME in Ubuntu 26.04 does not support X11 sessions. Could you clarify what environment you have? How did you change from Wayland to X11?

3 Likes
3

I don’t know
i installed xorg and edited /etc/gdm3/custom.conf and uncommented the line:

#WaylandEnable=false

So maybe it automatically switched to KDE?
But now i’m using gnome with wayland

4

I’ve just experimented with this, and this doesn’t in fact enable Wayland. As @avb66 stated, Ubuntu 26.04 doesn’t support X11.

May I ask, what made you decide to install xorg?

The system can’t automatically switch to an entirely different desktop environment, unless you have previously installed it. Did you perhaps install Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu?

There’s something going on here that we’re not aware of. Let’s see if we can find out.

Please open a terminal (you can press the keys Ctrl+Alt+T, or find “terminal” in your menu). Then, enter the following five commands, and let us know what response you get from each of them.

cat /var/log/installer/media-info; echo
apt list --installed '*ubuntu*desktop' 2>/dev/null
echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP
echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
echo $DESKTOP_SESSION

It’s possible that your installation of xorg has messed things up a bit.

5

ubuntu-desktop/resolute,now 1.570 amd64 [installed,upgradable to: 1.570.4]
ubuntu:GNOME
wayland
I have to say, drop down menus didn’t work before i installed xorg or anything

6

There’s something missing in your output. I’ve edited my post; please try again. Five commands this time.

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Ubuntu 26.04 “Resolute Raccoon” - Release amd64 (20260423.1)
ubuntu-desktop/resolute,now 1.570 amd64 [installed,upgradable to: 1.570.4]
ubuntu:GNOME
wayland
ubuntu

8

Thank you. That tells us that you installed Ubuntu 26.04; you’re running GNOME (not KDE); and that you are still using Wayland.

Your attempt to switch to X11 didn’t seem to work, unsurprisingly.

OK, so that was a red herring.

Unfortunately, at this point, I’ve hit a blank. I hope that someone else will be able to get you closer to the answer.

1 Like
9

At this point I would ask you additional info about your system. Two important questions weren’t yet asked here:

  • Hardware specifications (notably GPU)
  • Is your system up-to-date? In Terminal please run sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade, look out for error messages, if any post them in full.
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-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Raptor Lake-P [UHD Graphics]
vendor: Intel Corporation
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 04
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom fb
configuration: depth=32 driver=i915 latency=0 resolution=1920,1080
resources: iomemory:600-5ff iomemory:400-3ff irq:167 memory:6002000000-6002ffffff memory:4000000000-400fffffff ioport:4000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff memory:4010000000-4016ffffff memory:4020000000-40ffffffff

and the output of your commands:
Not upgrading yet due to phasing:
python3-software-properties software-properties-common

and : Failed to connect to system scope bus via local transport: Connection refused

I have another computer and the issue is the same

11

This ^^^ is the only unusual result but unlikely to be related with your reported dropdown menu issue.

Intel Graphics seldom have issues, yours is a relatively recent architecture, the open-source driver (in kernel) is correct so it’s not that either. Is this the only graphics card? There are laptops with hybrid Intel+Nvidia or AMD+Nvidia or even other rarer combos…

Finally, you say you have the same issue in a different computer? If so, it must be caused by something they have in common, i.e., some “weird” software and/or unusual user settings you installed/applied…

12

Well I don’t think i have two graphic card (doesn’t show up on the ressource manager nor lshw)
And i have no idea which parameter it could be

13

I updated my system and it worked!
thank’s yall

2 Likes
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