Extra grey NetWorx tray icon added at every login on Kubuntu KDE
15 posts
I am seeing this: when I reboot, I see the normal colourful icon and an additional grey-scale icon. If I reboot again, I see the normal colourful icon and 2 grey-scale icons. If I remove the grey-scale icons, the next reboot adds an additional grey-scale icon again.
The application works fine except for this issue...
I am happy to test and provide feedback if you like
I'd like to look into this. Which Linux distribution and version is it, which desktop environment (GNOME, KDE, XFCE and so on), and which version of NetWorx?
Linux distribution and version
cat /etc/os-release PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 25.10" NAME="Ubuntu" VERSION_ID="25.10" VERSION="25.10 (Questing Quokka)" VERSION_CODENAME=questing ID=ubuntu ID_LIKE=debian
Desktop environment (GNOME, KDE, XFCE, etc.)
KDE
Application version
26.1 - This was not in your app from what I could see; I had to get it from apt. I tried to find the version number on an About page or similar within the app, as that is where I would expect to find it....
Is this a stock Kubuntu installation, or standard Ubuntu with KDE installed on top? If it's the latter, which display manager is in use, sddm or gdm3?
It was a fresh install of stock Kubuntu 25.10. I installed it from the Kubuntu 25.10 USB last month, still setting everything up (installing the apps I want, etc.). I have previously installed Ubuntu and added KDE afterwards, but I find starting with Kubuntu works better for me, so that is what I have done since Kubuntu 10.10, yes, 25 years ago. I got this computer last year and set up Kubuntu last month as a dual boot with Windows 11.
I am using sddm as my one and only display manager, gdm3 is not installed
We've tried a clean install of Kubuntu 25.10 and can't reproduce it so far. Where exactly do the grey-scale icons appear: system tray, desktop or launcher? Do they show up immediately after login, or only once the application starts? And does logging out and back in, without rebooting, also increase the number?
A screenshot would help a lot too.
I have nothing in auto start; I checked this in case the issue was caused by multiple entries here...
Here is a screenshot; it shows the 2 icons, one grey and one coloured, as well as the pop-up when I hover over the running application icon in the launcher. You can see that hovering over the running application icon shows 4 graphs; I only set up 2 graphs (they are on my secondary screen)
Where exactly the grey-scale icons appear (system tray, desktop, launcher)?
system tray
Do they show up immediately after login, or only once the application starts?
The application starts when I log in. I am not manually starting the app. This is what installing the app did when it got set up; I did not change any start options to get the application to run....
Does logging out and back in (without rebooting) also increase the number?
Here is what I get after logging out and back in without restarting....
This is what I see after logging out and then back in without rebooting; now I have 6 graphs and 3 icons, 2 grey and one coloured
If I right-click on the grey icons in the system tray and click close, the extra graphs disappear from the pop-up when hovering over the application icon in the launcher, and when I log out and then back in, the number of grey icons gets reset back to 1 and 4 graphs when I hover over the icon....
It means several copies of NetWorx are running in the same session. Each copy has its own tray icon and graph windows. The first one shows the normal coloured icon, and any others are grey: they're inactive and don't write to the database, so the same traffic isn't recorded twice.
So the grey icons themselves are expected whenever more than one copy is running. There should only be one per session, so the real question is what's starting the extra ones. Since NetWorx starts automatically when you log in, the desktop environment or some other startup mechanism may be launching it more than once.
Everything you say makes sense; however, why is it loading an additional instance each time I log in, so it always increases the number of icons?
If it always loaded 2 copies I would look at where the application is set to run on login, but the fact it increases each time tells me it is not a simple load on login issue, as that would result in the application being started with the same number of icons each time. For the icons to increase each time, it is something else.....
That's a good point, but it still looks like several copies are running in the same session. Could you check how many networx processes there actually are? For example:
ps aux | grep -i networx
More than one, apart from the grep line itself, would confirm it.
Also check whether there's a startup entry at ~/.config/autostart/networx.desktop. There should be just the one, which starts NetWorx once when you log in.
I asked AI to have a look... here was my prompt:
I am seeing the application NetWorx being loaded multiple times on logging in to KDE's desktop, and each time I log in I see this count increase by one so I see 2 systray icons, then after logging in I see 3 systray icons then logging in again I see 4 systray icons for the app NetWorx
And below is the reply from the AI (it recommends turning off the session restore in KDE, I didn't think I set this... I will try this fix and report back):
This is a classic KDE session restore + autostart conflict. Each login, KDE restores the previous session (which already had Networx running) and launches it again via an autostart entry — so the count grows by one every time.
Let's check both sources:
Found it. There are no autostart entries, but KDE's session restore is saving Networx. Let me dig deeper:
There's the problem. The saved session files show 6 accumulated Networx instances in the kwin session and 2 in the legacy session. KDE is restoring all of them on every login, and each logout saves even more.Here's the fix — two steps:
1. Clean the accumulated session data
Kill all but one Networx instance, then clear the stale session files:
bash
2. Prevent it from happening againYou have two options:
Option A — Disable session restore and use a proper autostart entry (recommended):
bash
Option B — Keep session restore but clean it now: Close all Networx except one, then log out cleanly so KDE saves only one instance. This is fragile and may drift again over time.I recommend Option A — it completely prevents the accumulation problem. Would you like me to run those commands?
After going with option A and restarting KDE, I now only see 1 coloured icon, no grey icons, so it was a restore session issue in KDE which is now turned off, so the issue is resolved.
That makes sense. A number of icons that grows by one at every login does sound like session restore, with more and more copies being saved and started again each time.
I looked into it, and there doesn't seem to be a reliable way for an application to opt out of KDE's session saving. If session restore piles up copies like this, NetWorx will simply be started several times, so turning session restore off as you did is the fix. We'll keep it in mind in case anyone else reports the same thing.
Thanks for getting to the bottom of it.