Fixing the blank context menu in Opera under Wayland on Linux

Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Using Opera under Linux and Wayland (in my case Fedora and Ubuntu), I encountered a rather annoying problem (another one to add to the list): when right-clicking on certain areas of the browser, especially the tab bar, the context menu appeared completely blank.

After several tests, I discovered that the problem was related to Opera’s Wayland/Ozone implementation.

The solution is to force Opera to run using XWayland, until a definitive fix is implemented.

Let’s see how to do it permanently without affecting possible upgrades that might overwrite the configuration files:

Create the local user applications directory if it doesn’t already exist:

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mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications

Copy the original Opera `.desktop file:

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cp /usr/share/applications/opera.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/

Edit the file:

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nano ~/.local/share/applications/opera.desktop

We need to modify all lines that begin with Exec, adding the parameter: --ozone-platform=x11

It should look something like this:

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❯ cat ~/.local/share/applications/opera.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Opera
GenericName=Web browser
Comment=Fast and secure web browser
TryExec=opera
Exec=opera --ozone-platform=x11 %U
Terminal=false
Icon=opera
Type=Application
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml_xml;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;x-scheme-handler/ftp;application/x-opera-download;
Actions=new-window;new-private-window;

[Desktop Action new-window]
Name=New Window
Exec=opera --new-window --ozone-platform=x11
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Desktop Action new-private-window]
Name=New Private Window
Exec=opera --incognito --ozone-platform=x11
TargetEnvironment=Unity

Finally, completely close Opera:

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pkill opera

With this, when you restart the browser, the problem should disappear completely :)

In my case, this solution worked on both Ubuntu and Fedora 44.

PD: Banner image generated with A.I.

Fedora on [BLOG].rdiez.es

Fixing the blank context menu in Opera under Wayland on Linux