[SOLVED] Rebuilding apps' .desktop files

[ineuw]

Is there a gnome, or system utility to clean and rebuild the .desktop files of installed applications? Installing xed from the terminal failed to list it anywhere in the Cinnamon menu. Already reset the menu to defaults, but it didn't help. Uninstalled and reinstalled it through the Software Manager, which finally created the local .desktop file.

[Larry78723]

xed shows as Text Editor in the Cinnamon menu.

[ineuw]

Thanks for the reply. I know that xed is "Text editor", but nothing existed. Also, it was only an example. and it really doesn't help answer question.

[mikeflan]

Is there a gnome, or system utility to clean and rebuild the .desktop files of installed applications?

That is a reasonable request. I would settle for right clicking the LM menu item and obtaining the "exec" command that would launch the app from a terminal. What I request is pretty easy:

Code: Select all

ls -la /usr/share/applications
grep -rin 'exec=' /usr/share/applications
grep -rin 'name=' /usr/share/applications

What you request would also be nice to have. I have searched quite a bit and surprisingly can't find anything. I have no doubt something like this exists.

[ineuw]

Thanks for helping me to look. Next I will post on Gnome forum.

[ajgringo619]

When you say "clean and rebuild", are you talking about apps that you've edited via the menu editor and want to revert back? Check in $HOME/.local/share/applications - this is where any user-edited .desktop files are stored, which override the ones installed in /usr/share/applications.

[ineuw]

When you say "clean and rebuild", are you talking about apps that you've edited via the menu editor and want to revert back? Check in $HOME/.local/share/applications - this is where any user-edited .desktop files are stored, which override the ones installed in /usr/share/applications.

@ajgringo619, apologies for the late reply, but I was swamped. By "clean and rebuild", at first it was assumed that there is a single file listing the menu entries, including uninstalled items that were not removed from the list. Then, I focused on both the system and local .desktop files and removed the uninstalled apps. Studied the differences and edit the ones in the .local/share, and reset the Mint menu several times. It seems that consecutive LM updates included a gnome update as well and corrected my issues.