How to force Unity reload ~/.local/share/applications/

A little late, but i stumbled upon this thread before finding a solution, atleast to my problem, googling something related, nearly giving up.

As per this guide help.ubuntu.com, don't just edit or create your .desktop files in /usr/local/share/applications or ~/.local/share/applications. Instead, create the file somewhere else and use

desktop-file-install <your_file.desktop>

to add the file.

E.g. you create ~/myapp.desktop and do

desktop-file-install --dir=$HOME/.local/share/applications ~/myapp.desktop

Existing files of the same name will be overwritten and unity updated, you can use --delete-original if the source is not needed anymore, or

sudo desktop-file-install ~/myapp.desktop

to install it for all users.

The way to do this is to run the command

killall unity-scope-home

after opening the dash the process is started automatically again.

The correct icons are then displayed...

sudo update-desktop-database will refresh the .desktop database.