Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1184311
In Process
Startec
Asked: 2019-10-28 15:34:11 +0800 CST

Which desktop file is my application using?

  • 772

When I click on Applications from Gnome Shell (Ubuntu 18.04), I only see one "Desktop Icon" for the application Emacs.

I want to change the arguments that this desktop icon launches with.

However, I have no convenient way to figure out which desktop icon that is, or which commands it runs. When I clikc on "Show Details", I just get an error message in Ubuntu Software that says: "Cannot find emacs_desktop.desktop".

(Note: If Ubuntu / Gnone really had their UX down, I would be able to see this from a right click menu similar to "preferences" tab on windows).

enter image description here

So then I the command line I try: locate emacs.desktop and I get:

/snap/emacs/232/meta/gui/emacs.desktop
/snap/emacs/232/usr/share/applications/emacs.desktop
/snap/emacs/232/usr/share/applications/emacs.desktop.bak
/snap/emacs/232/usr/share/emacs/26.3/etc/emacs.desktop
/snap/emacs/255/meta/gui/emacs.desktop
/snap/emacs/255/usr/share/applications/emacs.desktop
/snap/emacs/255/usr/share/applications/emacs.desktop.bak
/snap/emacs/255/usr/share/emacs/26.3/etc/emacs.desktop
/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications/emacs_emacs.desktop

How can I easily figure out where an application's desktop file is, or which desktop file it is using?

gnome icons .desktop desktop-icons

1 Answers

  1. You need to match the exact Name= field in the .desktop file. So, I expect the following command to display the name of the .desktop file that defines the Emacs "application":

    find / -name "*.desktop" 2>/dev/null -exec grep -l "Name *= *Emacs" '{}' \;

    Note the case sensitivity.

    • 0