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Fabby
Asked: 2015-09-12 07:10:09 +0800 CST

Why doesn't the icon change in the launcher when I change the .desktop file?

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I'm a bit of a tinkerer and changed my most commonly used application icons to have my own steam-punk theme.

The only application whose icon I couldn't get to change was qBitTorrent.

The .desktop files are only present in /usr/share/applications to make them available to all users and ~/.local/share/applications/ has been verified not to contain any desktop files.

Can anyone shed a light on why this is happening? (And give some direction how to change that icon?)

SteamPunk Launcher

For the ones out there who don't know about SteamPunk: I want to change the ugly blue icon... ;-)

Some more info:

$ lsattr /usr/share/applications/qBittorrent.desktop
-------------e-- /usr/share/applications/qBittorrent.desktop

$ lsattr /usr/share/pixmaps/Steampunk-Vlc-Audio-Player-Icon-Mkii.png 
-------------e-- /usr/share/pixmaps/Steampunk-Vlc-Audio-Player-Icon-Mkii.png

Now that I've got qTox running myself (with a little bit of help from @JacobVlijm) and no one has given me any ideas for qBittorrent, I'm adding a bounty...

Note:

I'm not looking to change the icon using the ~/.local/share/applications/ override but for all users in /usr/share/applications/ or any other system-wide setting!

14.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The problem is that qBittorrent's .desktop file sets the icon based on the localization:

    sed -n '/^Icon\(\[[^]]*\]\)\?=.*$/p' /usr/share/applications/qBittorrent.desktop
Icon=qbittorrent
Icon[be]=qbittorrent
Icon[cs]=qbittorrent
Icon[el]=qbittorrent
Icon[en_GB]=qbittorrent
Icon[es]=qbittorrent
Icon[eu]=qbittorrent
Icon[fi]=qbittorrent
Icon[gl]=qbittorrent
Icon[it]=qbittorrent
Icon[ja]=qbittorrent
Icon[lt]=qbittorrent
Icon[nb]=qbittorrent
Icon[pl]=qbittorrent
Icon[pt]=qbittorrent
Icon[pt_BR]=qbittorrent
Icon[ro]=qbittorrent
Icon[ru]=qbittorrent
Icon[sv]=qbittorrent
Icon[uk]=qbittorrent
Icon[vi]=qbittorrent
Icon[zh_TW]=qbittorrent
Icon[en_AU]=qbittorrent

    So changing the icon set by the first generic Icon= entry doesn't help:

    screenshot1

    You'll have to set the Icon= entry matching your current locale; however since localizing the icon by setting the very same icon for each locale is a very silly thing to do in first place, you might as well just change all the Icon= entries by running this command (it will create a qBittorrent.desktop.bak backup file in /usr/share/applications):

    sudo sed -i.bak 's|^Icon\(\[[^]]*\]\)\?=.*$|Icon\1=/path/to/icon|' /usr/share/applications/qBittorrent.desktop

    Insert the path to the icon here-------------------^-----------^

    user@user-X550CL ~ % sudo sed -i.bak 's|^Icon\(\[[^]]*\]\)\?=.*$|Icon\1=/home/user/icon.png|' /usr/share/applications/qBittorrent.desktop 
user@user-X550CL ~ % sed -n '/^Icon\(\[[^]]*\]\)\?=.*$/p' /usr/share/applications/qBittorrent.desktop
Icon=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[be]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[cs]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[el]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[en_GB]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[es]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[eu]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[fi]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[gl]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[it]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[ja]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[lt]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[nb]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[pl]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[pt]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[pt_BR]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[ro]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[ru]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[sv]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[uk]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[vi]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[zh_TW]=/home/user/icon.png
Icon[en_AU]=/home/user/icon.png

    Or delete the localized Icon= entries and change the generic Icon= entry by running this command (it will create a qBittorrent.desktop.bak backup file in /usr/share/applications):

    sudo sed -i.bak '/^Icon\(\[[^]]*\]\)\=.*$/d; s|^Icon=.*$|Icon=/path/to/icon|'

    Insert the path to the icon here------------------------------^-----------^

    user@user-X550CL ~ % sudo sed -i.bak '/^Icon\(\[[^]]*\]\)\=.*$/d; s|^Icon=.*$|Icon=/path/to/icon|' /usr/share/applications/qBittorrent.desktop
user@user-X550CL ~ % sed -n '/^Icon\(\[[^]]*\]\)\?=.*$/p' /usr/share/applications/qBittorrent.desktop
Icon=/path/to/icon

    Or just change the Icon= entry matching your current locale by any mean, such as:

    sudo nano /usr/share/applications/qBittorrent.desktop

    screenshot2

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