[xubuntu-users] Menu editor question

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Tue, 9 Aug 2022 20:31:29 +1000, Phil wrote:
>While messing around with menu editor trying to have an application 
>visible in only one directory I managed to hide the application form
>all directories. How do I get it to be visible again, preferably in
>only one directory?

Hi,

all menu editors I tested and that are probably almost all, are more or
less useless.

I'm in favour of a panel that has got an editable menu, that is
independent from desktop files.

However, if you are in favour of a menu managed by desktop files, you
can edit such a menu manually, with the "cp" command and a text editor.

Packages install those desktop files in /usr/share/applications/. You
can override those files by coping a wanted file to either
/usr/local/share/applications/ for system-wide changes, affecting
all users or to ~/.local/share/applications/ for a user-specific
change, affecting the menu of this particular user only. After you
copied a file you can edit the copy.

To get the application edited with a menu editor visible again, just
take a look at ~/.local/share/applications/, by running:

  ls -hl ~/.local/share/applications/

Most likely it's one of the listed desktop files. If so, for testing
purpose move the file away, by running:

  mv -i name_of_the_app.desktop ~

I haven't read https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/desktop_entries myself,
but consider https://twitter.com/snowden/status/1460666075033575425 and
that this freedesktop.org thingy should be equal for all Linux distros.

Regards,
Ralf