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Cerin
Asked: 2012-03-12 17:38:22 +0800 CST

How do you create a custom application launcher in Gnome Shell?

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How do you create a custom application launcher in Gnome Shell?

I have a local Eclipse installation that I'd like to be to quickly launch. So I created a symlink to the eclipse binary and placed it on my desktop. If I open a terminal, cd to ~/Desktop and run ./eclipse it starts Eclipse perfectly. However, if I click the Eclipse icon on my desktop, and choose run, nothing happens.

Alternatively, I wouldn't mind being able to search for Eclipse on the "Activities" screen, but I can't find any documentation on adding or registering custom applications.

.desktop gnome-shell

6 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Try to create a eclipse.desktop file under /usr/share/applications (or ~/.local/share/applications or directly in ~/Desktop) with the following content:

    [Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Eclipse IDE
Exec=/path/to/eclipse/executable
Icon=/path/to/eclipse/icon
Type=Application
Categories=Development;

    You can choose another category, too. For additional information:

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  2. Although creating your own launcher by hand is a valid solution, my preferred one is to go through alacarte and create a new entry on the menus, then it will appear as a launcher.

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  3. In newer Gnome versions Comment and Terminal sections become mandatory so minimal .desktop file is now:

    [Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Sample Application Name
Comment=A sample application
Exec=application
Icon=application.png
Terminal=false
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  4. If you want a list of custom launchers you can access from the panel you could use the MyLauncher extension. MyLauncher Gnome Shell Extension

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  5. The easiest way I have found to create launchers using a full-featured GUI is vie MenuLibre, which is in the Ubuntu repositories. It will hold your hand through the process and allow you to create a custom launcher in a fast and straightforward manner, as long as you know where your resources reside (binary location, icon location, working directories, etc). Alacarte does not work reliably for me.

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  6. If you want proper shortcut, then do following:

    1. go to /usr/share/applications
    2. coppy one of the *.desktop files to this location with the name you intend to use as application name;
    3. adjust the executable path
    4. adjust the icon path 5! check carefully for all the places in this file where old references are, and edit them to your needs.
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