Top Panel ignoring or moving spacers

I do not like the “normal” spacing for the top panel icons. It looks like trash honestly. But I added custom spacing and arranged things so it looks a little more uniform. Except Budgie just randomly decides to completely ignore or move the spacers wherever it feels like. I open the settings, nothing has changed, but in the top panel the spacing is just awful. What is wrong with this?
Here you can see that the power, notification, and bluetooth are all wrong. Also, the clipboard, frequency, and screenshot are wrong.

But in the settings, everything is still correctly spaced.

This is how it should look based on the current configuration.
Screenshot from 2021-11-20 12:10:37

When applets start to wander around that is because the panel gsettings info has become corrupted.

Usually this happens if you uninstall an applet that was expected in a layout, logout and login. Once done there isn’t a way back to resolve… even if you reinstall the applet again.

Occasionally the panel can become corrupted if you have had a whole session crash or you have unexpectedly powered off your machine … e.g. running out of battery power.

Basically the only way to recover is to reset the panel back to its defaults and redo your config again.

nohup budgie-panel --reset --replace &

Note you can backup your panel settings ab restore again if it messes up again.

I haven’t uninstalled any applets since I first installed Budgie in 20.04. It’s always done this, I just never bothered trying to fix it. All I have to do to “fix it” is move the spacers back and forth one position and it works fine.
But what you are suggesting sounds like a bug by itself. You should be able to uninstall an applet without breaking the entire panel.

I agree with you. It is a bug … its the sort of thing waiting for anyone who wants a challenge to resolve.