xscreensavers show in panel launcher add list.

[kb5050]

Hqave noticed this in other Distros with XFCE, so it is possibly for team XFCE to work on.

When you create a Launcher in the Panel, and then do properties, then + to add an item, in addition to all of the menu items in the list, you also get all of the installed
Xscreensaver screensaver names in the list. While it might be nice to actually launch one, if you wanted to, it seems to be a flaw, in that those items which have no icons, are
not applications, They are all the names of the various screensavers.

Now I am not recalling if they show up when you add all the missing Xscreen Screensavers via Synaptic, which I did. Or if the ones that are included show up even from the Live DVD/USB.
But it is seeming useless to have to scroll past all of them to get to the items you do want.

I consider this at the bottom of the list of things to fix. But it is confusing. Thanks for your consideration. I am sure the bug is some configuration of XFCE panel itself.

[Jerry3904]

Welcome to the Forum! I have never seen that behavior, and am unable to replicate it here with the default MX-16 setup. It likely belongs to Xfce, so here are the search results for "xscreensaver" on the Xfce Forum:

https://forum.xfce.org/search.php?search_id=2074851014

If nothing there looks useful, then you can always join and ask about it. Good luck.

[skidoo]

xscreensaver content is split across multiple debian packages.
Maybe jerry's system has only the "xscreensaver-data" package installed, and that is well-behaved...
...vs packages "xscreensaver-data-extra" and/or "xscreensaver-gl-extra" and/or "xscreensaver-gl" are ALSO installed on kb5050's system
and one of those packages is creating the unwanted .desktop files (detected by the xfce panel}}launcher}}"app chooser" widget).

kb5050, AFAIK nothing "needs" those desktop files.
You can test that theory by deleting the .desktop file associated with a given xscreensaver module
then visit xscreensaver configuration ui and check whether that module is now unavailable. (I don't think that's the case.)

It's been a while (in recent years, I just completely uninstall any xscreensaver* debian packages) but IIRC the quick way to
remove the nuisance you've described was to bulk delete all the the .desktop files from the /usr/share/applications/screensavers directory

[kb5050]

I will do a backup first, and then Delete that as per your request. Worst case scenario then might be that I have to go into Xscreensaver configure list, and reactivate all the ones etc.

It seems to me that the whole bunch of them, appear to be treated as applications, that integrate into the Launcher. But if I add one of the screensaver items to the launcher, I cannot launch it from the launcher.

For me it is just a stupid bug, someplace. There is nothing to do other than remove the named screensavers from the launcher, which is really easy.

[richb]

I do not see this behavior either and I do have xscreensaver-data-extra", "xscreensaver-gl-extra" and "xscreensaver-gl" installed. What version of MX and XFCE do you have installed?

[JayM]

I'm able to replicate it in MX-19 after installing xscreensaver from Popular Apps. I also installed three extra xscreensavers (BSOD, dizzy and one other one) from Stable Repo. The individual screensavers show up as though they're apps that can be added to a launcher in the panel. Since the original post was from 2017 this seems to be something in common with more than one version of Xfce, 4.12 (I assume that's what MX-17 used as it was Stretch-based just like MX-18.x) and 4.14. There have been no bug reports filed against xfce-panel about this on https://bugzilla.xfce.org/.

Edit: the additional xscreensavers I installed don't appear in launcher properties as apps that can be added to the launcher, just xflame, xjack, xlyap, xmatrix, xrayswarm and xspirograph. It could possibly be a bug in the xscreensaver package that causes it to present individual screensavers as applications, or just be the way xscreensaver is (I noticed that the individual screensavers are xml files stored in /usr/share/xscreensaver/config, and launchers are also xml format .desktop files, so ??) rather than a bug in Xfce.

Edit 2: I don't know why on my system (MX-19 in a VM) only those xscreensavers are showing up as addable items in a panel launcher when there are a lot of others that don't appear. (See attachment.) I compared some of the xml files of some of the ones that appear in launcher with some that don't and the formats look identical.