ElementaryOS 8.1: GUI no longer shows minimise/close buttons next to title bar

[sees7ern]

Is it a bug?

• I know this is an issue with the app, and contacting Mullvad support is not relevant.

I have checked if others have reported this already

• I have checked the issue tracker to see if others have reported similar issues.

Current Behavior

As usual, I have updated Mullvad VPN via CLI as described on your website (https://mullvad.net/en/download/vpn/linux).

It has successfully updated the app to version 2026.1 on all my laptops running either Ubuntu (24.04.4 LTS) or ElementaryOS 8.1.

However, since the update, the app GUI no longer shows minimise/close buttons next to the title bar on ElementaryOS. Other apps still have them on my ElementaryOS systems (see attached image). I can confirm that my Ubuntu systems also still display the buttons in the app GUI.

Expected Behavior

Have minimise/close buttons next to the title bar on ElementaryOS 8.1.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Update Mullvad VPN on ElementaryOS 8.1 via CLI
2. Open Mullvad VPN GUI on ElementaryOS 8.1 in a Secure Session.

Failure Logs

Operating system version

ElementaryOS 8.1

Mullvad VPN app version

2026.1

Additional Information

ElementaryOS 8.1 is fully updated at the time of writing.

[tobias-jarvelov]

Hi, thanks for the report.

It looks like this behavior is due to ElementaryOS' recent switch to use Wayland and that the Mullvad VPN app can now run under Wayland, if a present session is detected.

Electron, which the Desktop app uses, has support to run under Wayland. However, window decorations (such as the close button) are only added when Electron detects that the compositor does not support the XDG decoration protocol, because then the expectation seems to be that it is the compositor task to add them. I have not checked but this is likely the case for Gala, which ElementaryOS uses as its compositor.

ElementaryOS is not a distribution we officially support and its compositor, Gala, is not used in many (any?) other distributions either so unfortunately the only advice I have is to run the app under X11 if possible and reporting this issue to ElementaryOS, because this would likely affect several other Electron apps, not just the Mullvad VPN app.

To run the app under X11 you can either start an X11 session, or using XWayland by starting the app from command line with the --ozone-platform=x11 argument.

[sees7ern]

Thank you very much for checking and the information.

It is not a critical issue for me. I can still minimise the GUI via right click - Hide or Super + H.

I might inform the ElementaryOS developers about the issue and see whether they can address it on their end.