alex285 / gnome-desktop-files-boilerplate

Custom desktop files for Gnome desktop

Sample desktop files for GNOME desktop

Examples are based on Free Desktop standards and demonstrate the most common uses of desktop files, but not all.

Paths

User-space .desktop files can override the system wide in the typical way.

/home/alex/.local/share/applications/foo.desktop

Will override

/usr/share/applications/foo.desktop

Therefore we can add additional actions on apps.

/home/alex/.local/share/applications/firefox.desktop

Add some quick links on Firefox

...
Actions=open-google-youtube;open-gmail;

[Desktop Action open-youtube]
Name=YouTube
Exec=firefox https://www.youtube.com/

[Desktop Action open-gmail]
Name=YouTube
Exec=firefox https://www.gmail.com/
...

Best practices

For quickly creating custom application files, create a desktop template on Gnome templates directory

$HOME/Templates/newDesktop.desktop

Then on

$HOME/.local/share/applications/

Right click in Gnome Files, New Document-> newDesktop and modify it!