[AppIndicatorSupport-FATAL] unable to update overlay icon

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Where is the error displayed? in the log or do you get an UI dialog? if so could you take a screenshot?

I see this error in the logs.

I have upgraded from Ubuntu 18.10 to 19.04 by do-release-upgrade command and I have exactry the same problem.

About a second after login to desktop, attached System Error dialog box popped out every time, but no detailed information was shown when clicked "Report Problem".

By observing syslog messages by journalctl -f, the following error messages ware shown every time:

 4月 24 20:23:44 deepk gnome-shell[15196]: [AppIndicatorSupport-FATAL] unable to update overlay icon
 4月 24 20:23:44 deepk gnome-shell[15196]: [AppIndicatorSupport-FATAL] unable to update overlay icon
 4月 24 20:23:50 deepk gnome-software[16378]: Failed to find one package for nvvp.desktop, /usr/share/applications/nvvp.desktop, [0]
 4月 24 20:23:50 deepk gnome-software[16378]: Failed to load snap icon: local snap has no icon
 4月 24 20:23:50 deepk gnome-software[16378]: Failed to load snap icon: local snap has no icon
 4月 24 20:23:50 deepk gnome-software[16378]: Failed to load snap icon: local snap has no icon
 4月 24 20:23:51 deepk gnome-software[16378]: hiding category audio-video featured applications: found only 0 to show, need at least 9
 4月 24 20:23:52 deepk gnome-software[16378]: Failed to load snap icon: local snap has no icon

The error in the screenshot seems like it's different from the appindicator log error? Did you submit it? If you click on report problems do you get more details on the issue?

Hi,
Error dialog box that I posted was popped up almost at same time when the following syslog was generated.

<Syslog>
 gnome-shell[15196]: [AppIndicatorSupport-FATAL] unable to update overlay icon

Now I found that error dialog box is related to "Update-notifier".
Dock icon of Update-notifier is shown when Error dialog popped up (see attached screen shot).
When I clicked on "Report Problem" button, Dock icon of Update-notifier disappeared and no further information on this issue was shown.

Sorry, forgot to attach screen shot image of my Post #7.

It looks like SOLVED my issue.

I found a crash report in /var/crash which is created by upgrade process.

Once I delete this crash report from /var/crash, error dialog and related syslog output that I reported no longer occur. I'm not very sure that my case was the same as originally reported issue.

How was the file you deleted named? Did you report the issue? It does look different from the bug here indee

Sorry, I have't took memo of file name and I couldn't recover deleted file.
However I'm sure that it was not Update-notifier.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I get the same error in my log, and I was researching thinking it had to do with the KeepAwake Gnome-Shell extension:

[AppIndicatorSupport-FATAL] unable to update overlay icon

The KeepAwake icon no longer appears after I installed Ubuntu 19.04. Here's the issue on the extension:
https://github.com/jenspfahl/KeepAwake/issues/22

I get the message in the log when I press Alt-F2 and type r.

If I disable the extension and restart Gnome, I still get the message in the log, so I'm thinking it's not related.

FYI, I'm viewing the log with:
journalctl /usr/bin/gnome-shell -f -o cat

Hopefully, that provides some clues.

I have seen a number of issues related to this error message. Including slow wake up from sleeps. Long pauses in screen repaint. Long launch times for applications. The only sure fix I found was to completely purge the gnome-shell-extension-appindicator package and reboot. The system them becomes properly responsive again. I have no idea what visual flim flam this extension provides so I can certainly do without it. It is a shame that it is installed by default.

I have now reinstalled the extension and having been running for a day without problems. This leads me to think that this a persistent data, rather than code related problem. I can only assume that the purge reinstall cycle removed whatever was causing the problem.

Same issue here. This appears to cause major freezes during several seconds every time I receive a desktop notification and unlock my computer.

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-shell-extension-appindicator - 33-1

---------------
gnome-shell-extension-appindicator (33-1) experimental; urgency=medium

  * Team upload.

  [ Marco Trevisan (Treviño) ]
  * New upstream version:
    - Completely refactored the icons handling, to use the same look and
      behavior of the default gnome-shell indicators and properly handle
      HiDPI cases.
    - appIndicator: Always use Gio.Icon as model and St.Icon ui (LP: #1723827,
      LP: #1817073, LP: #1832793, LP: #1825623)
    - appIndicator: Don't try to reload multiple times a pending icon
    - appIndicator: Lookup theme icons using scale factor
    - testTool: Add test to show a changing label
    - indicatorStatusIcon: Use Clutter actor alignment on 3.35+ versions
      (LP: #1866042)
    - appIndicator: Add a cancellable to stop the proxy on destruction
    - Util: Cancel previous properties refresh requests on new one
    - util: Don't emit signal changed if a property contents is equal
    - Util: add message structured logging as well
    - Util: Cleanup syntax of refreshPropertyOnProxy
    - appIndicator: Use simpler implementation for argbToRgba
    - appIndicator: Use warning level for not found icons

  [ Fini Jastrow ]
  * appIndicator: Fix runtime error when icon can not be loaded

 -- Marco Trevisan (Treviño) <email address hidden> Thu, 12 Mar 2020 22:36:05 +0100

Me too // 3/24/20 4:11 PM session-7.scope Failed to load snap icon: local snap has no icon

Hi all,

i want to know the exact state of this bug. I see that is fix release but my version is :
amine@amine-EasyNote-TSX62HR:~$ apt list gnome-shell-extension-appindicator
En train de lister... Fait
gnome-shell-extension-appindicator/focal,focal,now 33-1 all [installé]

and i'm still having this problem and it's worse as it crashes my system that has to reboot several time a day (i'm usin microsoft teams which i think provoks this)

Jun 8 10:45:16 amine-EasyNote-TSX62HR <email address hidden>[4194]: Microsoft Teams - Preview1, Impossible to lookup icon for 'Microsoft Teams - Preview1_2-panel'
Jun 8 10:45:16 amine-EasyNote-TSX62HR gnome-shell[4194]: JS ERROR: Exception in callback for signal: icon: Error: Argument 'filename' (type filename) may not be null#012_createIconByName@/<email address hidden>/appIndicator.js:406:26#012_cacheOrCreateIconByName@/<email address hidden>/appIndicator.js:368:14#012_updateIconByType@/<email address hidden>/appIndicator.js:574:18#012_updateIcon@/<email address hidden>/appIndicator.js:601:14#012_emit@resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/core/_signals.js:133:47#012_onPropertiesChanged/<@/<email address hidden>/appIndicator.js:220:22#012_onPropertiesChanged@/<email address hidden>/appIndicator.js:214:15#012refreshPropertyOnProxy/<@/<email address hidden>/util.js:51:19
Jun 8 10:45:17 amine-EasyNote-TSX62HR systemd-resolved[522]: Server returned error NXDOMAIN, mitigating potential DNS violation DVE-2018-0001, retrying transaction with reduced feature level UDP.

Thank you for your help