Unity8 is not in desktop mode inside the snap session

[Pat McGowan]

On occasion when I enter the user session running unity8-session, the shell comes up in staged mode and the desktop mode toggle is disabled. Enabling it does not dynamically change the state. Logging out and in again seems to then start in desktop mode.

unity8-session snap on classic

gsettings get com.canonical.Unity8 usage-mode
says Windowed"

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

Just hit this again, here I have two users, one running unity7, and one with unity8 snap
This is the entire sequence but not sure if any of the steps are pre-requisites

Login to unity7
Login to the unity8 session
Switch back to unity7
Refresh the unity8 snap
Login to unity8
Logout of unity8
Login to unity8
-- UI is in staged mode
Logout, login
-- UI is in staged mode
Toggle desktop mode
Logout
Login
-- UI is in windowed mode
Select the Unity7 user or switch users
-- tablet greeter is displayed
Login to unity8, logout
-- desktop greeter is displayed

[Michael Zanetti (mzanetti)]

I've tried to reproduce this but couldn't make it happen yet. Can you please attach unity8.log when it happens? Thanks.

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

Rebooted, opened a user session with unity8, and it was staged mode.

The related issue is the desktop toggle does not work.

[Michael Zanetti (mzanetti)]

according to the log in comment 3 it should actually have switched to windowed mode...

After a chat in IRC it turns out that other things relying on gsettings doesn't work either.

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

A bit more on the settings changes, I logged into the session again (and got windows) and the previous change to the show launcher setting got honored so it seems to have been written during the previous session. But again changing the setting did not adjust the UI dynamically. Perhaps something with the notification side of settings changes?

[Michał Sawicz (saviq)]

Yeah that sounds about right, added gsettings-qt, but there's a chance the problem is with confinement, then.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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