no apps in dash after pressing super+a

[wyndlass]

i'm using ubuntu 16.04.7 unity on a hp g7 i7 16gb ram system. for some months now, dash hasn't been showing any apps, filters set to all, search doesn't show anything. .desktop files are where they should be. i've tried googling and nothing has worked. it's like the dash config file has been changed from /usr/share/applications to something else. where is the config file so i can check that? what else can i check or do? even when i install new stuff, they don't get added to dash, regardless from apt-get or software center. thanx

[monkeybrain20122]

Ubuntu 16.04 has reached eol back in April. Unity user here, it works great in Ubuntu 20.04 (also 21.04, in 21.10 unity-tweak-tool doesn't work but they are working on it, otherwise unity works well as well) You should back up your data and do a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. My suggestion is don't do an "upgrade", as there has been too many changes from 16.04 to 20.04. It will be a lot more work to try to fix a messed up upgrade (and your problem may be caused by corrupt config which will persist in an "upgrade")

[ActionParsnip]

I recommend a clean install of 20.04 (Codenamed "Focal"). This is LTS and supported for 5 years. You will also be able to upgrade directly to 22.04 in April next year (LTS to LTS upgrades are supported). You can restore your user data from your backups.

You could also upgrade to 18.04 using the web as well but as stated above, 16.04 is dead and gone.