Desktop Entries

Created Tuesday 17 January 2017

Desktop Entries are the configurations that describe how an application should run - along with appearance (icon etc) in menu entries.

General

# Desktop entries resides in and must end with .desktop;

# /usr/share/applications
# /usr/local/share/applications
# ~/.local/share/applications # Takes precedence over the above two

# A .desktop template;

[Desktop Entry]

# Can be; Application, Link (web-link), Directory
Type=Application

# The version of the desktop entry specification to which this file complies
Version=1.0

# The name of the application
Name=jMemorize

# A comment which can/will be used as a tooltip
Comment=Flash card based learning tool

# The path to the folder in which the executable is run
Path=/opt/jmemorise

# The executable of the application, possibly with arguments.
Exec=jmemorize

# The name of the icon that will be used to display this entry
Icon=jmemorize

# Describes whether this application needs to be run in a terminal or not
Terminal=false

# Describes the categories in which this entry should be shown
Categories=Education;Languages;Java;

Hide Desktop Entries

# To make sure the .desktop entry does not get overwritten, first copy it to ~/.local/share/applications
# (Create the folder if necessary)
$ cp /usr/share/applications/<APPLICATION_ENTRY> ~/.local/share/applications

# Then Edit your copied entry, and add the following line

NoDisplay=true

Modify Environment Variables

# Copy the .desktop entry (as explained above) and Edit the Exec line by adding env
# Ex;

Exec=env LANG=he_IL.UTF-8 abiword %U