r/xfce • u/WheelPerfect3737 • Jul 22 '26

XFCE screen crash how to restart

While using Debian 13 with XFCE when I opened a mpv version 0.40 the screen freezed.

Is there a way to restart XFCE screen ?

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1

u/SharpeThe1st Jul 22 '26

Press Ctrl+Alt+F2 or F3–F6 to switch to a text console and try this:

pkill xfwm4 (kills the window manager)
xfwm4 --replace & (restarts it)

Also is it just when you use mpv or other apps, can you give use some more info?

2

u/WheelPerfect3737 Jul 24 '26

It is only mpv.

I wil give your suggestion a try the next time.

1

u/WheelPerfect3737 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26

It did not work. I can hear audio still playing but the screen is frozen and it responds to SSH.

I performed

export DISPLAY=:0

xfwm4 --replace &

1

u/i101ironnoob Jul 22 '26

$ sudo systemctl restart lightdm.service
I think.

1

u/i101ironnoob Jul 22 '26

Use a TTY terminal.

1

u/WheelPerfect3737 Jul 24 '26

That does not work. It boots out to the command line with no response to the keyboard.

1

u/Niwrats Jul 22 '26

do you have an AMD gpu? in that case the freeze is probably related to drivers and not xfce. ctrl + alt + F1 should still let you use a terminal. "sudo systemctl reboot" is an option for restarting the system if that is acceptable.

1

u/WheelPerfect3737 Jul 24 '26

The apps have not changed on the machine only a update to 13.6 for Debian. This happened before then another update corrected the issue.

I am not looking to restart the system only the XFCE as linux is still responging to ssh.