[SOLVED] - Solution for Folder Icon

[rahulkundu4u]

Hi,

I am using Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon Desktop. I have 3 drive partitions. First one for Linux Mint os and other two for general purpose storage (NTFS Formatted).

In the storage drive every folder I want to use a different icon, this helps me to identify the folder easily. I know that I can change folder icon by right-clicking and then clicking the property. But the problem is here once I format the OS(Just like I did yesterday to upgrade from LM 18.2 to 19.1) all icons are gone.

What I want is to keep the folder icon inside each folder and the folder should automatically apply the icon. In this way, the folder icon will be kept intact even I format the os or copy the folders to an external HDD.

I am a novice Linux user and it will be great if someone helps me.

[rene]

As fas as I'm aware not any of the usual Linux desktop file managers will/can do this out of the box. However, your want coincides with wanting for example folder/folder.jpg or folder/cover.jpg as the icon for a folder containing a media collection.

When I search for that myself I only hit on the outdated https://github.com/flozz/cover-thumbnailer which has been dead since basically 2011. I would not recommend trying to install that but would recommend using it as a starting point if you were to code something up yourself. Which you may need to; it seems KDE may be an exception but am not finding a current cover thumbnailer for any current file manager as used by Mint.

[rahulkundu4u]

I have tried the above solution unfortunately, it does not work with nemo.

We can change the directory icon from properties manually one by one. After little bit search, I came to know that custom-icon info is kept as directory meta-data (gio info /directory-path). If I get any solution that will load this meta-data in bulk from a config file that will resolve my problem. In this way, I have to create the config once and then I can load at any time.

[smurphos]

What I want is to keep the folder icon inside each folder and the folder should automatically apply the icon. In this way, the folder icon will be kept intact even I format the os or copy the folders to an external HDD.

Here is a little bash script that should work in 19.x with nemo to set a custom icon programmatically to a selection of folders. My testing has been limited.

Prerequisite - each folder that you want to have a custom icon should hold the icon you want to apply but they should all have the same name e.g thisfoldericon.png.

Replace "/path/of/interest/" with the directory you actually want to search - e.g "/media/data/" or whatever.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
for F in $(find "/path/of/interest/" -type d); do
  if [[ -f "$F"/thisfoldericon.png ]]; then
    echo "Applying "$F"/thisfoldericon.png as custom icon to "$F""
    gio set "$F" metadata::custom-icon file://"$F"/thisfoldericon.png
  fi
done

[rahulkundu4u]

Wow, this just works. Think you very much @ smurphos

I really like Linux Mint as it is and do not want to change the default things e.g. file browser because of stability. I believe this is a useful feature for many regular desktop users and this small utility should be included in Linux Mint by default.

[rahulkundu4u]

I found one minor issue. The solution does not work where the directory name contains space. I have solved it in the following way.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
OIFS="$IFS";IFS=$'\n';for F in $(find "/path/of/interest/" -type d); do
  if [[ -f "$F"/thisfoldericon.png ]]; then
    echo "Applying "$F"/thisfoldericon.png as custom icon to "$F""
    gio set "$F" metadata::custom-icon file://"$F"/thisfoldericon.png
  fi
done;IFS="$OIFS"

[smurphos]

Thanks for that and the fix. I wonder if there is another workaround? This has got me thinking about methods to backup and restore other metadata (emblems etc)......

[rene]

I wonder if there is another workaround?

Generic would be to let find execute the loop body itself, i.e.,

Code: Select all

find "/path/of/interest" -type d -exec /bin/sh -c '[ -r "{}"/thisfoldericon.png ] && echo "..." && echo gio set "{}" ...' \;

but what I find to be a lot nicer is zero-terminating and piping into a while read loop:

Code: Select all

find /path/of/interest/ -type d -print0 | while read -d $'\0' F; do
  if [ -r "$F"/thisfoldericon.png ]; then
    echo Applying "$F"/thisfoldericon.png as custom icon to "$F"
    gio set "$F" metadata::custom-icon file://"$F"/thisfoldericon.png
  fi
done

I'd by the way consider naming the icon "folder.png" (and/or scan for a few possible names such as folder.png, folder.jpg, cover.png, cover.jpg, ...) for compatibility with Windows.