Edge PWAs no longer use separate window class - all group under main Edge icon (Wayland / GNOME)

[ziabytes]

Description

Hi, and thank you for maintaining this Flatpak.
It’s been working really well overall.

I’ve recently noticed a change in behavior starting around 2025-09-07 to 2025-09-10: all installed PWAs (even across different profiles) now appear grouped under the main Edge browser icon in the GNOME Shell dash/taskbar when using the Flatpak version of Edge on Wayland.

Previously, each PWA would open in its own window group with its own icon. This still works on Chromium/Brave/Chrome on the same system, and can still be restored there by editing the .desktop file to include:

StartupWMClass=<same value as Icon>

In the current Edge Flatpak build, this no longer has any effect, which makes it harder to use PWAs separately in workspaces or for task switching. This might be related to how the .desktop files or StartupWMClass values are being handled in the Flatpak packaging.

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Environment

• Package: com.microsoft.Edge (Flatpak)
• OS: Ubuntu 25.04 x86_64
• Kernel: Linux 6.14.0-29-generic
• DE: GNOME 48.0
• WM: Mutter (Wayland)
• GPU: Intel Iris Xe
• CPU: 13th Gen Intel Core i5-1340P

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Steps to Reproduce

1. Install any PWA (e.g. Outlook, Teams, Spotify) from Edge (Flatpak)
2. Launch the installed PWA
3. Observe that it appears grouped under the main Edge browser icon

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Expected Behavior

• PWAs should appear as their own app icon/window group like they did previously (and as they still do in Chromium-based browsers)

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Actual Behavior

• All PWAs are now bundled under the main Edge icon/window group
• Editing the generated .desktop files to add StartupWMClass no longer changes the behavior

---

Notes

• The change appeared between 2025-09-07 and 2025-09-10
• It does not occur in Chromium, Brave, or Chrome on the same system
• It might be related to .desktop file handling or StartupWMClass behavior within the Flatpak sandbox

Thank you for your time and work.
This package has been great overall, and I appreciate your efforts to maintain it!

[T13nou]

Same issue here, for Teams & Outlook PWA apps, it's now opening under the Edge icon.

[evan-a-a]

It looks like Edge has switched to using Wayland by default, which changes the WMClass. I think that flextop will need to be updated to fix this.

[evan-a-a]

Nevermind, flextop doesn't mess with this. Can you try uninstalling and reinstalling a PWA to see if Edge updates the WMClass correctly?

[ziabytes]

Nevermind, flextop doesn't mess with this. Can you try uninstalling and reinstalling a PWA to see if Edge updates the WMClass correctly?

Tried again, unfortunately it does not

This is what it comes in as

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Name=Outlook (PWA)
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/mailto
Exec=flatpak 'run' '--command=/app/bin/edge' 'com.microsoft.Edge' '--profile-directory=Profile 4' '--app-id=faolnafnngnfdaknnbpnkhgohbobgegn' '--app-url=https://outlook.office.com/mail/' '%U'
Icon=msedge-faolnafnngnfdaknnbpnkhgohbobgegn-Profile_4
StartupWMClass=crx__faolnafnngnfdaknnbpnkhgohbobgegn
Actions=New-event;New-message;Open-calendar
X-Flatpak-Part-Of=com.microsoft.Edge
TryExec=/var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/com.microsoft.Edge

[Desktop Action New-event]
Name=New event
Exec=flatpak 'run' '--command=/app/bin/edge' 'com.microsoft.Edge' '--profile-directory=Profile 4' '--app-id=faolnafnngnfdaknnbpnkhgohbobgegn' '--app-url=https://outlook.office.com/mail/' '--app-launch-url-for-shortcuts-menu-item=https://outlook.office.com/calendar/deeplink/compose'

[Desktop Action New-message]
Name=New message
Exec=flatpak 'run' '--command=/app/bin/edge' 'com.microsoft.Edge' '--profile-directory=Profile 4' '--app-id=faolnafnngnfdaknnbpnkhgohbobgegn' '--app-url=https://outlook.office.com/mail/' '--app-launch-url-for-shortcuts-menu-item=https://outlook.office.com/mail/deeplink/compose'

[Desktop Action Open-calendar]
Name=Open calendar
Exec=flatpak 'run' '--command=/app/bin/edge' 'com.microsoft.Edge' '--profile-directory=Profile 4' '--app-id=faolnafnngnfdaknnbpnkhgohbobgegn' '--app-url=https://outlook.office.com/mail/' '--app-launch-url-for-shortcuts-menu-item=https://outlook.office.com/calendar'

Note that whether I make either of the following changes manually, it still causes the same issue of opening under the edge icon

Icon=msedge-faolnafnngnfdaknnbpnkhgohbobgegn-Profile_4
StartupWMClass=msedge-faolnafnngnfdaknnbpnkhgohbobgegn-Profile_4

or

Icon=crx__faolnafnngnfdaknnbpnkhgohbobgegn
StartupWMClass=crx__faolnafnngnfdaknnbpnkhgohbobgegn

[evan-a-a]

@ziabytes So it seems Edge may not populating the WMClass correctly. Can you verify the value of XDG_SESSION_TYPE in edge://gpu?

In the case of a Wayland session, the correct WMClass is msedge-_faolnafnngnfdaknnbpnkhgohbobgegn-Profile_4. This can also be verified in GNOME using Looking Glass (Alt-F2, lg)

[ziabytes]

apologies for the delay.
That is indeed WMclass in the looking glass

[evan-a-a]

apologies for the delay. That is indeed WMclass in the looking glass

Ok great. I’ll have to look into this.

[nathanieltagg]

I'm having the same issue, but I installed Edge directly, not with flatpack.

[evan-a-a]

I'm having the same issue, but I installed Edge directly, not with flatpack.

I was afraid of this being the case. I haven’t had a chance to dig in, but the way Edge works I suspected it wasn’t related to the flatpak.

[evan-a-a]

I’ll consider if we can hack around it.

[evan-a-a]

This does not appear to be fixed in 141 either (released today/yesterday)

[DevShourya]

I am also facing the same issue after the recent updates. I installed Edge using the DEB file on Ubuntu 24.04. Unable to find a solution for this.

[DevShourya]

Update:

I found a workaround for this issue.
It appears that the desktop entry file name is not correctly named during the PWA installation. Correcting the file name resolves the issue.

On Ubuntu 24, the desktop entry files are created in ~/.local/share/applications directory.
The file name for the Teams PWA was msedge-cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo-Default.desktop.
This file has the following content:

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Name=Microsoft Teams
Exec=/opt/microsoft/msedge/microsoft-edge --profile-directory=Default --app-id=cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo "--app-url=https://teams.microsoft.com/v2/?clientType=pwa"
Icon=msedge-cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo-Default
StartupWMClass=crx__cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo

Here, we can notice there is one additional underscore in the StartupWMClass value, and this ID is present in the file name as well. So, I added the underscore in the file name, and it started working as expected.

Before: msedge-cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo-Default.desktop
After renaming: msedge-_cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo-Default.desktop

Screenshot from my dock:

I hope it helps.

[fipster]

Before: msedge-cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo-Default.desktop After renaming: msedge-_cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo-Default.desktop

This works. Thank you!

[ziabytes]

Update:

I found a workaround for this issue. It appears that the desktop entry file name is not correctly named during the PWA installation. Correcting the file name resolves the issue.

On Ubuntu 24, the desktop entry files are created in ~/.local/share/applications directory. The file name for the Teams PWA was msedge-cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo-Default.desktop. This file has the following content:

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Name=Microsoft Teams
Exec=/opt/microsoft/msedge/microsoft-edge --profile-directory=Default --app-id=cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo "--app-url=https://teams.microsoft.com/v2/?clientType=pwa"
Icon=msedge-cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo-Default
StartupWMClass=crx__cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo

Here, we can notice there is one additional underscore in the StartupWMClass value, and this ID is present in the file name as well. So, I added the underscore in the file name, and it started working as expected.

Before: msedge-cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo-Default.desktop After renaming: msedge-_cifhbcnohmdccbgoicgdjpfamggdegmo-Default.desktop

Screenshot from my dock:

I hope it helps.

aw man i thought this would work. but this is practically another version of the same workaround that was making it work before in edge and chrome/ium before i opened my isssue.

I wonder if the problem is limited to those situations in Edge where there are multiple profiles in the browser