How do I get rid of unusable application icon on launcher?

[Colin Law]

On Fri, 24 May 2019 at 08:55, Owen Thomas <owen.paul.thomas at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Fri, 24 May 2019 at 17:31, Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 24 May 2019 at 04:09, Owen Thomas <owen.paul.thomas at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > ...
>> > I can right click on the icon displayed when I start the application from a CLI window. One of the options is to "Lock to Launcher"; I click on it so that when I close the application, the icon remains. After closing the application, I attempt to restart the application by clicking on the icon displayed in the launcher. The icon flashes for a bit, and then nothing happens.
>> >
>> > I want my application to start when I click on the launcher icon. It isn't. What is going wrong?
>>
>> That sounds like a problem with the desktop launcher file for that
>> app.  It may be failing because it expects a terminal or expects a
>> particular working directory or something similar.  What is the app
>> and how did you install it?
>> I presume that other apps work ok from the launcher.
>
>
> Other applications work fine.
>
> The problematic application is Netbeans 11. I installed it in my home directory initially under ~/netbeans-11, but moved it to ~/netbeans/netbeans-11 because I also have Netbeans 8.2 installed so both applications were moved under ~/netbeans. I think I created the launcher file (by locking the Netbeans icon to the launcher while the application was running) before moving the directory. I removed the icon form the launcher afterward, restarted Netbeans, then locked the icon to the launcher once more.
>
> I think Ubuntu is somehow using the original launcher file. If this is so, how do I delete it? If not, what else could be causing my problems?

An application desktop file isn't something that is created by putting
it on the launcher, they are provided with an application or you can
create your own.  The system wide desktop files are in
/usr/share/applications if I remember correctly.  Per user ones are in
.local/share/applications.  You can make a desktop file for your
application and put it in one of those locations, or you may find the
one for the old version there so you could change it.  If you have
mulitiple similar desktop files (showing the same icon) then it can be
difficult to be sure which one you are opening, if you change the Name
entry then you can tell which is which.

This may be helpful
https://askubuntu.com/questions/43793/how-do-i-add-netbeans-to-the-unity-launcher

Colin


>
>   Owen.
> --
> ubuntu-users mailing list
> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users