Blank White Screen When Launching Flet App from Taskbar After Initial Launch

[zeldridge]

Duplicate Check

• I have searched the opened issues and there are no duplicates

Describe the bug

After successfully launching a Flet App compiled with Flet Pack/PyInstaller/Nuitka for the first time, launching the app again via the taskbar shortcut created from the launched app results in a blank white screen. The shortcut seems to be incorrectly linking to C:\Users(USERNAME).flet\bin\flet-0.25.2\flet\flet.exe, and running this results in a blank screen.

When dragging the compiled .exe to the taskbar and using it as a shortcut, the app opens with a new Flet window with the Flet icon, but it still targets the flet.exe located in C:\Users(USERNAME).flet\bin\flet-0.25.2\flet\flet.exe, leading to the same issue.

Code sample

Code

import flet as ft

def main(page: ft.Page):
    page.add(ft.Text(value="Hello, world!"))

ft.app(main)

To reproduce

1. Compile a Flet app using Flet Pack/PyInstaller/Nuitka.
2. Launch the compiled .exe successfully for the first time.
3. Create a shortcut on the taskbar by dragging the .exe to the taskbar or simply right clicking the launched app and hitting pin to taskbar.
4. Close the app.
5. Click on the taskbar shortcut to relaunch the app.

Expected behavior

Expected Behavior:

The app should launch properly without showing a blank white screen when launched via the taskbar shortcut.

Actual Behavior:

Launching the app via the taskbar shortcut causes a blank white screen. The shortcut points to C:\Users(USERNAME).flet\bin\flet-0.25.2\flet\flet.exe, which results in a failed launch.

Screenshots / Videos

Captures

The blank white screen after launching the shortcut:

What the shortcut links to (which should link to the compiled .exe the compliler made):

Operating System

Windows

Operating system details

Windows 11

Flet version

flet 0.23.0 and higher have been tested and producing the same result

Regression

I'm not sure / I don't know

Suggestions

No response

Logs

Logs

There is no useful logs as its not launching my application from the shortcut. If there is a location for logs that might be useful for my case, please tell me where I can find these and I will provide them.

Additional details

This issue occurs only when launching the app from the taskbar after its first successful launch.

The taskbar shortcut appears to be pointing to the incorrect executable (flet.exe located in C:\Users(USERNAME).flet\bin\flet-0.25.2\flet\flet.exe).

When the .exe that was created by flet pack/pyinstaller/nuitka is run directly, the issue does not occur.

[zeldridge]

Seems like this issue has been around for a while too. #1704 (comment)

I am guessing that soultion was flet build, however, using flet build is not an option for me as I prefer to use Nuikta.

[HG-ha]

The problem has never been fixed

[henrydaum]

I am having this issue now

[zeldridge]

I am having this issue now

Use something other than Flet, I moved away from it as these issues were never even looked at. Flet is super buggy with windows applications and there are better solutions out there

[henrydaum]

I rewrote my code with PySide6, and it does fix the issue, but unfortunately it just doesn't look as good. Pros and cons I guess.

[ynerickson]

You don't have page.update() within your main function.

[ndonkoHenri]

Can you please give the latest version a try?
I gave it a try (downloadable sample built by CI here) in my UTM Windows 11 VM and it worked normally, both with the flet-pack and flet-build outputs.

[ndonkoHenri]

The shortcut seems to be incorrectly linking to C:\Users(USERNAME).flet\bin\flet-0.25.2\flet\flet.exe

Was able to confirm the issue, which will be fixed by the attached PR.

[henrydaum]

Great, glad to hear it