No Cider in Unity launcher

[alexander-potemkin]

Preflight Checklist

• I agree to follow the Code of Conduct that this project adheres to.
• I have searched the issue tracker for a bug report that matches the one I want to file, without success.
• I have confirmed that no support FAQ resolves my issue.
• I have checked that the correct behavior occurs on Apple Music Web (if applicable).
• I have verified that my issue is with a supported version and that it is with the desktop app (Support for other areas can be found in our Discord / on the appropriate repo).

How did you download Cider?

itch.io

App Information

No response

Operating System

Linux

OS Version

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

How would you describe your issue?

Frontend

Commit Hash

No response

Describe the Bug

I've installed the app, I can start it with the command line, but it's not on the Unity Launcher. The closest issue I can find - is that one, but in my case desktop file is in place:

$ ls -l `pwd`/cider.desktop
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 679 ene 11 00:55 /usr/share/applications/cider.desktop

But I can't get it in Unity's laucher.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install app
2. Press 'Super' button or 'Show Apps' - check Cider, type Cider

Anything else?

No response

[cider-collective]

Hello @alexander-potemkin 👋

We really appreciate you taking the time to report this issue, please double check your issue to make sure you are clear and concise in your description. This will help us to help you as quickly as possible.

We'd like to ask you be patient and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

In the meantime, take a look at our FAQs which may answer your question.

Thanks again and we hope you enjoy the app! 😃

[coredev-uk]

In future please follow the issue template carefully. You could clearly see this would be categorised as a backend issue, so in future please label it as such in the 'How would you describe your issue?' question.

[alexander-potemkin]

In future please follow the issue template carefully. You could clearly see this would be categorised as a backend issue, so in future please label it as such in the 'How would you describe your issue?' question.

Frankly speaking, I was quite confused with front-end / back-end separation, as I come from classic client-server development world and front-end is something that runs on client side for me; in that case, it looks like everything runs on front-end - hence my answer.

I can hear you though - I hope I wouldn't need that, but if I would - I can clearly see the logic now.

Is there any hope to get a fix or a work-around though?

[coredev-uk]

Further to what I said previously, it does state what each category is defined by in the issue template, rather than relying on the user to guess.

Have you tried using the experimental build from Taproom?

[alexander-potemkin]

Further to what I said previously, it does state what each category is defined by in the issue template, rather than relying on the user to guess.

Yeah, I’ve heard that your communication style is quite rude, I’ve just tried to be polite.

Have you tried using the experimental build from Taproom?

Nop, not interested in being a tester - want stable working solution, as long as it’s commercial software.

[coredev-uk]

I am pretty much the only person handling support here and the amount of issue we get where people fail to provide the right info, follow the template wrong, or just open issues and ignore them is stupid, so you'll have to understand why my attitude is this way, I'm basically at my end with support, that's just it. Anyway rant over.

This is a rapidly prototyping app, where we make constant changes and fixes. I am the only person maintaining Linux builds, and there was a few issues with the initial release as you probably saw on the issue you linked. These have all been rectified as far as I know, so I would highly suggest the Taproom experimental build. You would only be testing out the client (electron) changes and not any interface / UI changes.

If you do not want to use the tester builds then you will need to wait.

[alexander-potemkin]

I am pretty much the only person handling support here and the amount of issue we get where people fail to provide the right info, follow the template wrong, or just open issues and ignore them is stupid, so you'll have to understand why my attitude is this way, I'm basically at my end with support, that's just it. Anyway rant over.

This is a rapidly prototyping app, where we make constant changes and fixes. I am the only person maintaining Linux builds, and there was a few issues with the initial release as you probably saw on the issue you linked. These have all been rectified as far as I know, so I would highly suggest the Taproom experimental build. You would only be testing out the client (electron) changes and not any interface / UI changes.

If you do not want to use the tester builds then you will need to wait.

Rant accepted, thanks for sharing. Hope things will settle - I know: building innovative products, especially at affordable prices is never easy. Especially with a Linux zoo, with multiple variances of distributions and variances inside a single distribution.

Got the point on why you offered experimental build - my resistant caused by a will just to use software, without switching things, especially since attaching Apple Music is not exactly very much easy and I see many issues on how / what could go wrong and that makes me feel scary that I will have to deal with even more issues.

If there is no way to cherry-pick a single fix / desktop file or something, I would appreciate if you could share how to swtcih to Taproom builds (whatever that is) and ideally, how to revert back to the land of stability, once that is settled, if you can.

[coredev-uk]

Appreciate the understanding. I understand why you want to avoid the experimental builds, they are in nature unstable, however for the most part in our case they are more stable (its strange ik).

Taproom is a platform we host that provides stable, experimental and older platform support. It is available to all Itch.io purchasers and donators from various platforms. You can find it at https://taproom.cider.sh. It will have the most up-to-date packages, and provides a much nicer interface over itch for version tracking and other things.

The current builds on there are version 2.0.3, this is referred internally as the 'protocol version', which will be shown without the dots (203); this is essentially the client version, but not the interface version, which is 2.6.1 at the moment. Its a somewhat confusing approach if you are not familiar with this kind app development.

Hope this helps, a lot of users tend to get confused with the version info so I hope this clarifies it if there is any confusion.

[alexander-potemkin]

Appreciate the understanding. I understand why you want to avoid the experimental builds, they are in nature unstable, however for the most part in our case they are more stable (its strange ik).

Taproom is a platform we host that provides stable, experimental and older platform support. It is available to all Itch.io purchasers and donators from various platforms. You can find it at https://taproom.cider.sh. It will have the most up-to-date packages, and provides a much nicer interface over itch for version tracking and other things.

The current builds on there are version 2.0.3, this is referred internally as the 'protocol version', which will be shown without the dots (203); this is essentially the client version, but not the interface version, which is 2.6.1 at the moment. Its a somewhat confusing approach if you are not familiar with this kind app development.

Hope this helps, a lot of users tend to get confused with the version info so I hope this clarifies it if there is any confusion.

Happy customer here :)

Thank you, 203 version works! So glad to hear my music on my Linux laptop. If you would be looking for a challenges - a feature to download tracks offline would be just marvelous :)
(I know it's a super complicated feature, due to DRM and Apple, but I can still dream, right?)

And a final one:

• how do I switch to a stable version? Or I really may not care about that and just stay on a development one, as you mentioned that the software is evolving rapidly and there is no good reason to focus on stability here?
• is there a way to remove tray icon? I feel comfortable having it my 'Dock' only?

Thanks in advance!

[alexander-potemkin]

P.S. It might be also good to have Taproom linked somewhere in the app interface - downloads are indeed much easier there as opposed to Itch.