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How to know what icon is being used in the dock?

rated 0 times [ 1] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 521 / 2 Years ago, mon, july 18, 2022, 9:01:35

I want to replace the synaptic icon (although it could be any other).

I have found the Desktop Entry, Icon Theme and Icon Naming specifications that gnome follows (somewhat?), but even though I've been reading for a while now, the time has come to ask.

In /usr/share/applications there is "Synaptic Package Manager", and it contains Icon=synaptic. Now, I kinda guess that I maybe know that the dock uses the 48x48 size of icons, but when I put both "synaptic.svg" and "synaptic.png" (because I don't know how to figure out which extension is being looked for), even a plain "synaptic" in my 48x48 theme folder (and others, and other themes... etc, even using ~/.icons to be sure it gets looked up first), guess what?

The icon doesn't change.

Not even after a lot of gtk-update-icon-cache whatevertheme both in usr/share/icons and in $HOME/.icons

I'm a bit confused. It's a freaking icon. I've sudo find / -name "*synaptic*"ed and all, (restart included), but I don't see the icon that is actually being used. There must be something that I'm missing...

So I turn to you. It can't be this crushingly impossible to find out what icon is being used. I'm open to consider attaching debuggers and/or dissemblers if necessary (that could be memorable), but I have made the decision that I'm gonna change that icon.

Would you please help me, if you can? I will thank you a lot.

This is Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, the theme is "elementary", and my computer is a pretty standard Acer laptop.

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aveerakfas

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1 Year ago

answered 2 Years ago atelti · Accepted Answer

To change the icon of an application it is often better to just use a custom .desktop file in the user's home directory rather than changing icon files in the system-wide icon themes. It is also advisable to not edit a .dektop file in /usr/share/applications as this may be reset any time (e.g. by an update).

A good approach to display a different icon, and without the need of root permissions or tampering with root directories is to just copy any application's .desktop file to ~/.local/share/applications.

We can then edit the desktop file with any editor to change the path to our custom icon:

Icon=/full/path/to/icon  # or name of icon

We have to grant this .desktop file permission "Allow executing file as program".

After logging out and log back in the settings in ~/.local/share/applications will override system wide settings and our desired icon will be displayed.