Text missing from main titlebar & menus in Ubuntu 20.04

I'm using a recently-installed 20.04. I've been running into problems with text disappearing from the main Gnome titlebar and menus on return from suspend:

gnome with text missing

If I go into gnome-tweaks and select a different "Interface Text" font, the text will sometimes reappear (but only for some fonts; others remain invisible, and changing the size of the font doesn't seem to make the text reappear).

Any suggestions?

4 Answers

I use Kubuntu, and have noticed issues with fonts in GTK apps, but haven't yet tracked down a cause or solution. Until you are able to find and address the underlying cause, you can try the following as a workaround:

• Regenerate the font cache with sudo fc-cache -r, sudo fc-cache -f, or sudo fc-cache.
• Log out and back in. It's an annoyance, but should be quicker than a reboot.

I am not only missing text but also fonts. The solution here is:

sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -f /usr/share/icons/breeze

Fix for me was to restart GNOME. Ubuntu 21.

While logged in to your GNOME desktop press ALT + F2 key combination. Into the Enter a Command box type r and press Enter.

I'm just sharing my experience and how I fixed it. Not sure if your problem is the same or not.

Please check your log file:

journalctl SYSLOG_IDENTIFIER=gnome-shell -n 300

You might find some error log similar to this:

gnome-shell[4918]: Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file: No such file: (null)

Then add the below environment variables in your /etc/environment:

FONTCONFIG_FILE=fonts.conf
FONTCONFIG_PATH=/etc/fonts