Gnome .desktop file cheat sheet
Another one from the “I never can remember this damn thing” file … putting it here so I know where to look it up next time.
Incidentally I think there’s a “proper” way to do this, but this works fine and is quick. The “proper” documentation for this is at: https://developer.gnome.org/documentation/guidelines/maintainer/integrating.html
Steps
Create a .desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications/ (i.e. under your home directory in the .local hierarchy)
… if for any reason you want it to be available to all users on the system you can instead place it under the
/usr/share/applications/ directory instead.
The file will look something like this - obviously paths need to be amended accordingly for whatever application you’re setting up:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=IntelliJ PyCharm
GenericName=Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
Comment=IDE for software development
Exec=/home/dcminter/JetBrains/pycharm-2025.1.2/bin/pycharm
Terminal=false
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true
Icon=/home/dcminter/JetBrains/pycharm-2025.1.2/bin/pycharm.png
Categories=IDE;TextEditor;Development;
Once it’s there, run the following command to notify Gnome that it’s got changes to pick up:
$ sudo update-desktop-database
That’s it.