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Psychotechnopath
Asked: 2020-04-29 13:43:06 +0800 CST

How to make a desktop shortcut on Ubuntu 20.04?

  • 772

What is the most elegant way to create desktop shortcuts (e.g. to folders, applications, or documents) in Ubuntu 20.04?

shortcuts 20.04

15 Answers

  1. For Application Shortcuts:

    I think TheBuntuNewb's answer is pretty good. Do that using file manager:

    1. Open /usr/share/applications
    2. Copy the application shortcut to desktop
    3. Right click on the shortcut on the desktop and select Allow Launching

    For Folder/File shortcuts:

    Either directly use the terminal to create a symbolic link

    ln -s <complete path to dir> <shortcut save location>

    or

    1. Open the folder in the file manager (nautilus), navigate to the directory to which you want to create a shortcut to.

    2. Right click and select Open in Terminal.

    3. For shortcut to current directory, type and execute

      ln -s $PWD ~/Desktop/

      For shortcut to a file/folder inside the current directory, type and execute

      ln -s $PWD/filename ~/Desktop/

      or

      ln -s $PWD/dirname ~/Desktop/
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  2. Best Answer

    You can copy a file from /usr/share/applications to your desktop folder (~/Desktop) using the cp command. Then right click the .desktop file and select 'allow launching'.

    An example would be

    cp /usr/share/applications/nautilus.desktop ~/Desktop

    Make sure to include the .desktop ending.

    You might also have to allow launching for an existing .desktop file after upgrading to Ubuntu 20.04.

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  3. Easy graphical way:

    1. show your desktop in your home directory

    1.1. enable symbolic links in nautilus: Settings → Behavior → [x] Show action to create symbolic links

    1. open two windows of nautilus. one for the desktop, second for the shortcut you want to produce.

    2. click the item the shortcut has to produced for with the left mouse button and drag it to the desktop folder in your home directory with the ALT-key pressed.

    3. when you leave the item on the desktop folder a context meune appears, that give you three options. One of them is "create symbolic link" or so.

    Then you're done.

    Its awful, that this simple feature has to be done the complex way...

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  4. On default DE (Gnome 3) symlinking does not work, but .desktop files copying works as TheBuntuNewb said: enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here

    For Lubuntu 20.04 desktop the next works:

    Displaying items on the desktop could be done using .desktop file copying, .desktop file or folder symlinking or .desktop file creating.

    user@ubuntu:~$ ls -ailh ~/Desktop/
total 32K
8126477 drwxrwxr-x  2 user user 4,0K тра  1 12:58 .
8126465 drwxr-xr-x 21 user user 4,0K тра  1 11:49 ..
8130587 -rwxr-xr-x  1 user user  239 кві 20 17:38 anydesk.desktop
8126512 -rw-rw-r--  1 user user   90 тра  1 12:48 computer.desktop
8130987 lrwxrwxrwx  1 user user   22 тра  1 12:58 Documents -> /home/user/Documents
8130976 -rw-rw-r--  1 user user   97 тра  1 12:51 Downloads.desktop
8129570 lrwxrwxrwx  1 user user   45 тра  1 12:30 google-chrome.desktop -> /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop
8126514 -rw-rw-r--  1 user user   94 тра  1 12:48 network.desktop
8129813 -rw-rw-r--  1 user user  102 тра  1 12:58 trash-can.desktop
8126513 -rw-rw-r--  1 user user   89 тра  1 12:48 user-home.desktop
    • anydesk.desktop file is copied: `cp /usr/share/applications/anydesk.desktop ~/Desktop/
    • google-chrome.desktop is symlinked using ln -s /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop /home/user/Desktop/
    • Documents link is created by: ln -st /home/user/Desktop /home/user/Documents

    • Downloads.desktop file which opens the Downloads directory by nautilus is created the next way:

      [Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=nautilus /home/user/Downloads
Icon=folder
Name=Downloads

    In my case file properties changing is not required for .desktop file - it asks to execute it anyway:

    enter image description here enter image description here

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  5. In ubuntu 20.04 you need to make the file executable first, then you'll find the "allow launching" option, anyway I can't add it to the launcher, there's simply no way to do it.

    [Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=blender
Type=Application
Exec=/home/ego/blender-2.93.0-9b87d3f02962-linux64/blender
TryExec=/home/ego/blender-2.93.0-9b87d3f02962-linux64/blender
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=true

    It's ridiculous that there's no easy way to do this. You need to search google and become crazy simply to add one icon. One icon. Great OS.

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  6. A very easy and elegant way to create a shortcut to an file or folder is to create a symlink to the desktop. I have tested this on Lubuntu 20.04 LTS

    To do this do the following:

    1. Drag the file or folder from pcmanfm to your desktop enter image description here

    2. Then choose create symlink here

    3. Finally a shortcut should have been created! enter image description here

    As I said before, this will probably only work on Lubuntu 20.04 (featuring the LXQt desktop)

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  7. I'm very new to linux, but you all made this too difficult for 20.04. You were close to making it simple. Easy solution!

    Click on Files or Show Applications and type Files, and open Files. Now in the upper right corner you have your 3 lines hamburger menu. Click that, and click Preferences, then click Behavior, then "Show Action to create symbolic links".

    Now any time you right click on a file or folder, you can drag that file or folder with in "Files" to "Desktop" on the left side column. Once the symbolic link or shortcut is moved, you can rename it so it looks like the original source file or folder name.

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  8. This answer was meant to be a comment, but I don't have enough reputation points.

    A small addition on TheBuntuNewb's answer that might be obvious to some but nearly drove me crazy: the name of the .desktop file has to match exactly the name of the executable file.

    For example, I was trying to create a shortcut for pycharm named pycharm.desktop, but the Allow launch option was not showing up, until I renamed the file to pycharm.sh.desktop. After renaming everything worked smoothly.

    I am assuming this is due to security concerns, but it's worth pointing out to hopefully save someone's time!

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  10. Thanx to "nobody" here on this forum, the command below solves this problem once you've created your starter on your desktop:

    ~ gio set /location_of_the_starter/name_of_the_starter metadata::trusted yes #true for Ubuntu

    My exemple on Debian:

    me@debian:~ gio set /home/me/mystarter.desktop metadata::trusted yes

    My exemple on Ubuntu:

    me@ubuntu:~ gio set /home/me/mystarter.desktop metadata::trusted true

    Hope this helps.

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