How do I edit applications panel menu in Lubuntu?

If you want to edit menu entries, the program you want to use is alacarte. Do not waste your time in xml files. Alacarte is the best graphical menu editor for all gtk based menu systems.

sudo apt-get install alacarte

enter image description here

Note/update: alacarte (Main Menu editor) does not work in 12.04 or 12.10 Lubuntu


  • LXMenuEditor (Main Menu Editor)

If link dead, try this one with the same files that were available before

Execute the LXMenuEditor.jar file (Java needed), and then use the program to add the same file to the main menu... (with no spaces in the path...)

  • Java based
  • Cannot edit the main categories (as alacarte would if it worked)
  • Can open and edit .desktop files as text

enter image description here

On youtube

  • Menulibre (as vasa1 suggested in a comment) is a good solution, as it is available for Quantal 12.10 (it was not at the time of the question). See this and this answer. But, just like LXMenuEditor (and unlike Alacarte), it cannot create/edit main categories.

  • Considering Alacarte in Lubuntu: it deserves a try as far as it can edit/create main categories, but it's actions are indeed only randomly possible in 12.10 , and, as far as I can tell, it doesn't work at all in 12.04. It has to be regarded at this point (version 0.13.2-2ubuntu4) as unsuitable for LXDE/Lubuntu (as it is made for Gnome). Please comment here if this is not the case or if it changes in a new version. For a reason on why it does not work, see this answer.


The xml file menu.xml responsible for Lubuntu menu is located in/usr/share/lubuntu/openbox/menu.xml. You can edit the xml file there. But it is recommended to copy it in your home folder ~/.local/share/lubuntu/openbox/menu.xml and edit there.

The other two file involved in Lubuntu menu is :

  • /etc/xdg/lubuntu/menus/lxde-applications.menu
  • /etc/xdg/menus/lxde-applications.menu

Take a look at this page about LXDE menus. There is also a Java application which can be used for editing LXDE menus. It called LXMED and can be found on it's project page on sourceforge.net