I recently installed a third party application that was delivered as a folder containing a .sh file.
When the app starts it is within Terminal and it runs properly.
I would like to know how to have the app show up in the Applications menu so that I can just start it there without going to the .sh file every time.
I tried building a .desktop file in
~/.local/share/applications
But it still does not appear in the Applications menu.
I ran into a similar issue before. Instead of giving a one-size-fits-all solution, let me ask a few questions:
Did you structure your .desktop file similarly to the example in this post? (The post is about a different solution, but there is the .desktop structure below.)
Is your .desktop file executable (chmod +x applied)?
Hi codesniper, thanks for the quick reply.
Here is the file:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Terminal=False
Exec="/home/fw/utilities/docfetcher/version-full/DocFetcherPro-1.20-Linux-64bit-Portable/DocFetcherPro.sh"
Name=DocFetcherPro
Icon="/home/fw/utilities/docfetcher/version-full/DocFetcherPro-1.20-Linux-64bit-Portable/img/docfetcher32.png"
Comment=Document Indexing and Search
Categories=Utilities;Other;
I checked properties on the .desktop file,
Allow executing as a file is on.
The update-desktop... did not help
Nice tool. Unfortunately, there is no information about the category to the items. The items are created and shown in the Categories where they were created, but the created .desktop file (in ~/.local/share/applications/) contains no category designation either. Strange. Where is the individual .desktops' category information stored?
That You can choose. When You open Main Menu like You see on my first Picture, You have on the left Side the Categories. Simply click on one and it is chosen. then You see in the middle Part the Entries in the chosen Category. And when You then create the Entry. it will be in the chosen Category.
Sorry, I had to explain that directly. My Mistake.
What I meant is that .desktop files are created, but the Category information is not stored within. This Category information is stored elsewhere. Where?
I wasn’t satisfied with the incomplete and inconsistent handling of application categories in Zorin OS, while testing the above, so I took matters into my own hands.
To fully understand how Zorin OS manages .desktop file categories, I wrote some scripts that systematically:
Gathers all possible categories from .desktop files recognized on my system. resulting in categories.list.
Added the main and additional Freedesktop.org category list and added my own, such as X-GNOME-science (for the complete list see link).
Generates .desktop files for every listed category.