Skip to content

Linux desktop files

Louis Maddox edited this page Jan 19, 2018 · 9 revisions

I've got a repo of Desktops here and used .desktop files in the following Wiki entries:

I found a repo of 'standard' desktop files (from a Linux distribution possibly?) but can no longer find the link (searching GitHub and filtering 'code language' to desktop gives too many hits)

As advised here, once you've found a new .desktop file:

Place this file in the /usr/share/applications directory so that it is accessible by everyone, or in ~/.local/share/applications if you only wish to make it accessible to a single user. Which is used should depend on whether your application is installed systemwide or into a user's home directory. GNOME monitors these directories for changes, so simply copying the file to the right location is enough to register it with the desktop.

  • There's no need to run chmod +x on the file, but note that ~/ format in either Exec or Icon fields of the .desktop file will not be followed - i.e. use absolute paths.

  • These files are opened by xdg-open according to the shebang lines I've seen (I see no need to use them here)

Clone this wiki locally