Nautilus error keeps happening in the background?

General Help
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Please bear with me if I get anything wrong or if this is kind of a mess, I'm not terribly skilled and this issue has been very confusing and difficult for me to diagnose. I'm happy to provide additional details.

For months now, when I startup my laptop, and/or at seemingly random times while using it, an application icon pops up and then disappears every few seconds. It's the blank gear icon, like this except there are 2 dots/window indicators:
Screenshot from 2026-09-10 13-49-22

This will happen for minutes or hours at a time, and isn't very consistent. It usually seems to slow everything else down. I've determined this is nautilus; I can see it come up simultaneously in system monitor, and when right-clicking to view app details in the split second that it pops up, it took me to the nautilus/file manager details. I can also see it's nautilus in the logs.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to parse the logs much beyond that, but these are the ones that come up most frequently; hundreds or likely thousands of them a week:

Log 1

13:23:30 gnome-shell: Launching DING process
13:23:29 gnome-shell: DING: DBus interface for Gvfs daemon (org.gtk.vfs.Metadata) is now available.
13:23:29 gnome-shell: DING: DBus interface for File-roller (org.gnome.ArchiveManager1) is now available.
13:23:29 gnome-shell: DING: DBus interface for Nautilus (org.freedesktop.FileManager1) is now available.
13:23:29 gnome-shell: DING: DBus interface for Nautilus (org.gnome.Nautilus.FileOperations2) is now available.
13:23:29 gnome-shell: DING: DBus interface for Switcheroo control (net.hadess.SwitcherooControl) is now available.
13:23:29 gnome-shell: DING: DBus interface for Nautilus-Sushi (org.gnome.NautilusPreviewer) is now available.
13:23:29 gnome-shell: DING: GNOME nautilus 46.4
13:23:29 gnome-shell: DING: ** Message: 13:23:29.406: Connecting to org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: Detected async api for thumbnails
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .lrz
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .grz
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .lzo
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .lz
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .lzma
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .xz
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .bz2
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .gz
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .Z
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .xar
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .tar
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .tar
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .iso
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .tar
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .cpio
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .a
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .a
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .7z
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .cpio
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .tar
13:23:28 gnome-shell: DING: .zip

Log 2

14:02:51 firefox-bin: Failed to enumerate devices of org.freedesktop.UPower: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown

Again, apologies if these are unrelated and I'm wrong. I can link a full log over the course of an hour or so if that would be more helpful.

It happens whether or not I actually have file manager open, and ending the process does nothing. I upgraded to 18 hoping it might fix itself, but no dice. I'm sure I've tried other steps that I'm forgetting, as I've been putting it off for awhile.

(One last thing, it did seem like my var/syslog file was getting huge/not rotating for awhile, but that has since stopped so I don't believe it's related. Just thought I'd mention.)

2

Can you try:

sudo apt remove folder-color
# and then
gnome-extensions disable ding@rastersoft.com
# if it's not found, it's okay.

If it still doesn't work, you can switch to another file manager such as Dolphin:
https://forum.zorin.com/t/hidden-folders-files-must-be-different-color-or-transparent/59145/39?u=sglbl

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3

Both commands turned up with nothing.

However, I did already have Nemo installed, just hadn't set it to my default file manager. I followed these steps (the guide this post links to and the desktop commands they mention here too).

After applying those desktop settings and restarting it did not happen again upon startup. I can update if it does happen again but it seems like that may have stopped it.

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