[Resolved] Apps no longer working, uninstall and reinstall doesn't fix

Ubuntu 21.04. Two of my apps are no longer working. VLC and Flameshot stopped working. I uninstalled, rebooted and reinstalled them multiple times using the ‘Ubuntu Software’ app. It says they’re both installed (see pics) but when I double click on their icons, nothing happens. I also installed using the terminal (sudo apt-get install vlc). It installed but when I click on the VLC icon, again, nothing happens. Any way to fix this? Are there some hidden VLC and Flamesnot files that need to be removed? If so, how to do this?
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Help me understand where the the icon is located that you are double-clicking? e.g. “on the desktop” or “in the file browser”

Additionally, what is the result of the following command (run in the terminal):

which vlc

Additionally, can you navigate to a media file with your file manager, right click on it, and choose “open with application” (or something similar) and choose VLC from the list. Is this functional?

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If an installed app from the repository stops working and if you can’t get it working again try installing the app as a snap or flatpak. Chromium from the arch repository stopped working for me. It would constantly freeze. I removed it and installed the flatpak and it works just fine.

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Execute the program in a terminal and see if an error message is displayed.

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Thanks for the suggestions. I took a deep breath and did my first Timeshift restore back to before the problems and … it worked! (mostly) Flameshot is now working again. VLC still isn’t working but I think it’ll be easy to fix. VLC is a snap so I’ll just research how to uninstall and purge a snap. If you have any suggestions on the best way to FULLY remove / purge a snap, that would be appreciated.

I’m very grateful to Timeshift. I’ll start using it a lot more and commenting the snapshots.

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Update. I was able to remove the VLC snap and then I installed the VLC flatpak and that’s working normally. Now I’m back to normal. Thank goodness for Timeshift!

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Could someone mark this as Resolved? Thx.