Fixing the missing Viber indicator icon from the Cinnamon panel (and possibly other desktop environments)

The software center of Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon Edge offers Viber as a flatpak package. Installation is a breeze and the only downside is that it takes a lot more space than the .deb version from the official Viber homepage. I’m not sure if it is a common problem, but for me, the indicator icon was missing from the cinnamon taskbar.

I went trough a couple of installs and reinstalls of the Viber app with both the flatpak and deb versions. Unfortunately the deb version produced graphical anomalies (yeah, I really need a new PC), so I needed to fix the flatpak version.

Unfortunately, I can’t fully reconstruct the path I took towards the solution, but running the flatpak app from the terminal gave me the following error message:

viber QStandardPaths: wrong permissions on runtime directory /run/user/1000, 7755 instead of 7700

This clue led me to a StackOverflow question where I found a command that solved the permission problem:

export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/var/run/user/1000

Entering this command to the terminal solved the problem and the solution seems to be lasting as the icon appears even after reboot.

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2 thoughts on “Fixing the missing Viber indicator icon from the Cinnamon panel (and possibly other desktop environments)

  1. I have the same problem.
    Though it is not because of that issue you mentioned with XDG_RUNTIME variable. I had it as /run/user/1000, changed as you wrote to /var/run/user/1000. No change, so changed it back. Anyhow, I don’t have that permission related message by running flatpak run com.viber.Viber.
    What could be the issue? Using Linux Mint (latest) with Cinnamon.

    Only this message appears for running Viber from terminal:

    Failed to establish dbus connectionsh: line 1: xdg-mime: command not found

    1. Since writing this article I moved to Zorin OS which I really like, even more than Mint. If I were you, I would try installing the official deb version of the app as I have unpleasant memories of both flatpak and snaps. (Slow startup, degraded performance, permission issues) If possible, I’m using the official debs of all my apps instead of the alternatives.

      For viber the current link is: https://download.cdn.viber.com/cdn/desktop/Linux/viber.deb

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