Where's the File, Settings, or Help menus, or the "gear" icon?

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1

Operating system

Linux

Joplin version

3.4.3

Desktop version info

joplin-beta 3.4.3-1 (desktop), also joplin-desktop 3.3.13-1

What issue do you have?

Where are the Settings, Help and File menus. I cannot find them anywhere on my screen. I just started using Joplin yesterday.

This is on an Artix Linux. The Linux kernel is an older 6.6.9 (to maintain zfs compatibility, Artix/kernel/zfs compatibility is a touchy subject), but all the other software was last updated one day ago. It's a Plasma KDE OpenRC system.

It took me several hours to figure out how to import some material that I had been developing in another application, after I first installed Joplin yesterday. It took so long because all the Youtube, AI and search engine results I could find kept showing, telling and describing how to Import using an "Import" option on some conventional "Files" or "Settings" menu,

I Have No "Files", "Help", or "Settings" menu, nor any icons that look like a "gear".

Finally I realized the paperclip "Attach file" icon handled my import - quite nicely, once I clicked on it.

Now I want to add a couple of the more popular Plugins, and I am having the same problem: I can not find anything on the menus involving plugins ... I cannot even find the mythical Files or Settings or Help menus or options or related icons or anything like that at all.

I looked through how my Artix yay AUR install of Joplin installed the couple of default Plugins that come with the two recent 3.3 and 3.4-beta desktop versions I tried, and now I think I see where I can unpack downloaded Plugin *.jpl tarballs into the right directories.

But clearly there is still a major disconnect between the UI that all the easily searched, watched or AI prompted discussions are describing, with classic Files, Settings and such Menus, and the interface that I am viewing.

2

Try hitting ctrl + shift + m to re-enable the menu bar

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ctrl-shift-m does absolutely nothing within my Joplin window

4

Is there some Joplin config file option I can tweak to get this “Menu Bar” you speak of?

Perhaps there is something with how I have my desktop configured that impedes that Ctrl-Shift-M from getting through to Joplin.

If all new users have to Ctrl-Shift-M to get to see critical menus, then this sucks for new users. It’s back to the complaints I’ve heard from novice Unix/Linux command line users over the last 47+ years: no visible clue what needs to be done - only those who already have the muscle memory in their fingers can get to the next step of even the most basic operations.

I also tried this on “joplin-appimage 3.3.13-1”, but ran afoul of some install incompatibility with my KDE Plasma Electron desktop (or something like that) that was not in an area where I had the desire or skills to debug.

5

The menu bar shows by default when the app is installed. If it’s not for you, then that is not the typical experience.

If you hit the Alt key, it should trigger the menu bar to show up for a moment, but since Ctrl+Shift+M already failed I have my doubts about it. If it does show up, you can toggle it to show permanently in the View menu.

By default you can enter the Options menu directly by pressing Ctrl + Comma within Joplin, without needing to access the menu bar first.

None of these shortcuts are something new users are expected to know, nor are they things they need to know. It is only coming up here because you have an unusual problem.

6

Control-comma works - now I see the fine menu.

My guess, from looking at a couple of similar reports that the AI for this fine forum suggested, once it saw my initial report, my problem is running some variant, perhaps a variant as shipped or perhaps a variant as I have customized it, of KDE Wayland Plasma.

So yes - this is not a “universal” problem, but a more (not entirely, but substantially) “personal” problem.

I am now installing a bog standard Xubuntu 22.04 in Virtualbox, just to run Joplin

I expect this to fix my problems with my somewhat incompatible and somewhat less common desktop software configuration, and I look forward to a long and happy use of Joplin. Fortunately my overpowered desktop PC has plenty of extra power to handle a virtualbox for this singular purpose.

More expert Joplin users could work around this (such as by trying control-comma), but as a Joplin newbie, I want as few burrs in my saddle as possible.

(That “AI bot for this fine forum” is not going to put any of the fine humans here out of business anytime soon … as I’ve seen again over the last day, AI can get the easy stuff right, but throw it a curve ball, and it will (1) strike out, then (2) compliment the umpire for hitting a home run.)

Thanks y’all for your prompt, accurate and useful responses.

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I’m not currently on KDE Plasma or Wayland myself, but I did run both for about a month until a couple of weeks ago. Joplin worked pretty well for me in it, with no real observable differences other than the absence of a minor electron-related bug I experience in X11. Did you try installing via the official installation script?

wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/laurent22/joplin/dev/Joplin_install_and_update.sh | bash
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Yesterday,I had previously installed joplin using “yay -S joplin-desktop” (getting joplin 3.3) and “yay -S joplin-beta” (getting joplin 3.4 beta). Such yay installs from AUR are complex, automated substantial rebuilds.

Earlier this evening, I installed Joplin on the new, clean, Xubuntu 22.04 that I had just installed in a Virtualbox, using this same wget acquired script that you recommended. That result works - the menu bar is alive and well.

Then an hour ago, I ran the script you recommended I obtain via wget on that same Artix Plasma Wayland system. I failed to get a working joplin, and now I seem to have failed to capture the details of the error - they were in my terminal history, but seem to have scrolled out of the history buffer. My recollection is that your recommended script apparently succeeded, but then I could not get the resulting Joplin to run, due to some missing library. However I ran that script on my system while it still had the above joplin-beta installed using yay … so there is ample room for confusions not worth investigating.

Finally, I have now removed pretty much all remnants, however obtained, of Joplin from my Artix Plasma Wayland system, and then reinsalled joplin-beta (3.4) using yay from the AUR repository again. That works as it did a day ago - the menu bar missing, but otherwise ok.

Since I botched the experiment you asked for, running the wget acquired script you recommended on a system with an existing, quite different joplin, then losing the failed results, I am open to being asked to run this experiment again, if you ask. This time I would (1) clean out my yay/AUR joplin-beta first, and then (2) make an effort to capture and report the success or failure details. I am not looking forward to such a re-test, but if it would be useful, let me know.

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That’s okay - it was more of a suggestion (if you hadn’t already tried it) than an experiment, and if you’ve got a solution that works for you now, then that’s what really matters. I’m not a member of the Joplin team and would probably be pretty ill-equipped to know what to do with the results of that test.

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