I was having an issue on Ubuntu 20.04 where anytime I would save a file to the desktop, the desktop would freeze for a few seconds, and all icons would disappear or reappear. This happened when dragging items to the Trash as well.

The journey to get the answer was not very direct, but in the end, here is what I did to fix it:

Step 1: In FireFox, I visited https://extensions.gnome.org/

Step 2: I installed the browser extension into FireFox

Step 3: I ran this command:

sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell

Step 4: I went back to FireFox and installed the desktop-icons-neo extension from https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4337/desktop-icons-neo/

Step 5: I ran the following command and disabled Desktop icons.

gnome-shell-extension-prefs

Afterwards, the desktop began to work properly again.

I hope it helps someone!