#1142713 gnome-shell: logout button not displayed in quick menu on single-user host

Package:
gnome-shell
Source:
gnome-shell
Description:
graphical shell for the GNOME desktop
Submitter:
James Addison
Date:
2026-07-24 13:45:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
Tags:
#1142713#5
Date:
2026-07-24 12:48:22 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

After installing some printer-related packages today on my single-user Debian
testing/forky system, I intended to logout of my GNOME desktop session to
ensure that my active user groups (e.g. output of the `groups` command)
reflected any updated permissions applied during installation of those
packages.

However: it seems that GNOME upstream has made some changes that cause
the session logout button not to be displayed by default on single-user host
systems.

There is a GNOME setting named 'org.gnome.shell always-show-log-out' that can
be set to 'true' to override this; I have not configured that yet.

An upstream issue thread tracking this issue can be found at: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/work_items/9100

Regards,
James

#1142713#10
Date:
2026-07-24 13:42:59 UTC
From:
To:
Control: severity -1 wishlist
Control: tags -1 + upstream
Control: forwarded -1 https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Design/whiteboards/-/work_items/378

This is working as designed (by upstream). There is upstream discussion
about whether that design is the most appropriate or not, but at the
moment it seems to be working as expected.

Debian could diverge from that design choice, but each point of
divergence has a cost, so it should be a considered/consensus thing
rather than something we rush into.

It seems that in the past this behaviour might have been hidden by bugs
that meant the "Log Out" button was shown when it was not meant to be,
or by the existence of more than one selectable session (Wayland and
X11) which is one of the scenarios where upstream *did* intend the
button to be shown.

My understanding is that this is the official way to force the "Log Out"
button to be shown.

     smcv