How do I add a custom launcher?
You can add a custom launcher in Ubuntu 11.10 by typing this in a Terminal
gnome-desktop-item-edit ~/Desktop/ --create-new
Once you have customized the item on your Desktop, drag it to the Launcher.
First thing I'd do is navigate to /usr/local/share/applications & see if there is a geany.desktop
If so then just drag onto the launcher.
If not then would just a minute or so to set up. Your source has a 'geany.desktop.in', remove the .in & it's a perfectly good geany.desktop
Edit: the geany.desktop.in is a good template for your .desktop but needs some minor editing before copying or after. Lines 4,5,6 start with a _ that should be removed.
Ex. of edited geany.desktop (or edited geany.desktop.in
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Version=1.0
Name=Geany
GenericName=Integrated Development Environment
Comment=A fast and lightweight IDE using GTK2
Exec=geany %F
Icon=geany
Terminal=false
Categories=GTK;Development;IDE;
MimeType=text/plain;text/x-chdr;text/x-csrc;text/x-c++hdr;text/x-c++src;text/x-java;text/x-dsrc;text/x-pascal;text/x-perl;text/x-python;application/x-php;application/x-httpd-php3;application/x-httpd-php4;application/x-httpd-php5;application/xml;text/html;text/css;text/x-sql;text/x-diff;
StartupNotify=true
The source also has some geany icons in it, take the geany.png from geany-0.21/icons/48x48 & put somewhere like Pictures or Documents Then copy the geany.desktop.in file sitting in the source folder to ~/.local/share/applications/geany.desktop
Ex. - if it was in Downloads/geany-0.21
cp Downloads/geany-0.21/geany.desktop.in ~/.local/share/applications/geany.desktop
Then just go there,
nautilus ~/.local/share/applications
right click on geany .desktop > properties > click on the icon area & browse to your geany.png > open
Finally drag geany.desktop onto your launcher
Edit: one advantage you'll see with a more 'proper' .desktop is it has a MimeTypes= line. Open up the .desktop in a text editor & take a look.
You can, if you want, now drag & drop any of those mimetypes on to the geany icon in your launcher & they'll open up in geany
In Ubuntu 12.04 none of the above options worked for me when needing to create a launcher for a locally compiled app. This might be an app you created yourself or something you downloaded from source and then had to locally run make install. I ended up needing a hybrid of tips found in this thread. Using Angry Birds as a hypothetical example, I did the following:
- Create an angry-birds-launcher.desktop file and save it to the /usr/share/applications directory. You can do this in a single command with sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/xyz.desktop. The actual file name is not important so long as it ends in .desktop
Gedit will open with a blank page. In gedit, input the following text:
[Desktop Entry] Type=Application Name=[Name of your app, for example Angry Birds. This can be free text.] Exec=[full path to your executable and executable name, for example /usr/local/bin/angry-birds] Icon=[full path to your executable's icon and icon name, for example /usr/local/share/icons/apps/angry-birds.png] Terminal=false StartupNotify=true
Double check for typos and save the file.
- Open Nautilus and browse to /usr/share/applications and you should see in the list of apps your app with the correct icon.
- Double click to launch the app. A temporary icon will appear in the panel. Because you launched an app from the 'official' directory (usr/share/applications), Ubuntu will finally display the menu option to lock the launcher into the panel.
- Mouse over the launcher in the panel, right click and select Lock into Launcher. You should be all set at that point.