I ran into the same issue, and fixed it by manually rebuilding the desktop-icons@csoriano folder using their git repository.

Apparently you cannot really remove desktop-icons@csoriano and other extensions in /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/ from the system. They are expected by Ubuntu 20.04 to exist globally. It seems to me like their changes can only be actively overwritten by other (global and local) extensions. Another approach whould be rebuilding a "modified" version of the extension that simply does nothing.

Here are the steps to fully reconstruct the original /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/desktop-icons@csoriano/ after deletion:

# Corona-like I stayed at home for this. You can also do this in another location, doesn't matter much for the following steps...

cd ~

# Install the building tools used by the makers of desktop-icons@csoriano

sudo apt update

sudo apt install meson git

# Clone their repository to ~/desktop-icons/.

# MAKE SURE there is no file or directory in home called "desktop-icons"!

git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/ShellExtensions/desktop-icons

# Enter the cloned repository.

cd desktop-icons

# Prepare building the extension using meson.

# This will set the location of the build in it's config. So even if /usr/ is a root location, we don't need sudo for now.

meson --prefix=/usr/ --localedir=share/gnome-shell/extensions/desktop-icons@csoriano/locale .build

# Build the extension. You can execute this using sudo, otherwise you'll be asked for the root password by ninja.

ninja -C .build install



# We're technically done. Now let us clean up what we needed for the above.

# Remove the cloned repository.

rm -rf ~/desktop-icons/

# Remove building tools. You can keep these packages if you like, but they aren't needed for the extension anymore.

sudo apt remove meson git

sudo apt autoremove



# Apply changes (you might do that after you continued reading this post to the end).

# Alternatively you can just restart gnome, for that see https://stackoverflow.com/q/46565019/7638119

sudo reboot

For more information and if you got in trouble while following these steps, visit the official repository and maybe their issue page.

Here are the steps to modify the extension so that that it simply does nothing:

cd /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/desktop-icons@csoriano

# empty its entry script

sudo mv extension.js extension.js.old

sudo touch extension.js

(This might causes issues in future updates of Ubuntu 20.04. To undo this modification, just run cd /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/desktop-icons@csoriano; sudo mv extension.js.old extension.js.)

You mayhaps got in this situation because you followed the official workaround to fix the Ubuntu 20.04's desktop icons by installing nemo alternatively, like I did. I highly recommend you to undo this and wait for an official patch. Updates on a patch can be seen here on launchpad.net. Other workarounds can be seen there as well.

If you want to uninstall nemo and wait for an official patch of the issue, do the alternative installation in reverse:

# Remove nemo from local autostart.

rm ~/.config/autostart/nemo-autostart-with-gnome.desktop

# Remove the nemo package.

sudo apt remove nemo

sudo apt autoremove



# Apply changes.

# Alternatively you can just restart gnome, for that see https://stackoverflow.com/q/46565019/7638119

sudo reboot