Question

10

Custom .desktop file -- name doesn't show up in Unity dash on Ubuntu 13.04

rated 0 times [ 10] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 17979 / 2 Years ago, thu, april 21, 2022, 8:11:17

I have several .desktop files that I migrated over from 12.10 ubuntu. The applications they point to launch just fine, and the image displays in the dash when I search for them...but there isn't any text below the images when they show up in the dash, it's just the image. All other applications that were either installed by default, or installed through the software center show up just fine.

Here's a sample .desktop that I created:

[Desktop Entry]

Version=1.0

Name=Sublime Text 2

GenericName=Text Editor

Comment=Awesome Text Editor

Exec=/home/wes/Sublime Text 2/sublime_text

Icon=/home/wes/Sublime Text 2/Icon/128x128/sublime_text.png

Terminal=false

Type=Application

Here's what I mean:

No text for custom .desktop launcher

Edit: This is just one example of 2 or 3 .desktop files that I have created in the past, that worked as expected in 12.10, but all seem to be missing the application name in 13.04 (in the dash only). I don't think it is the icon size, as I have tried various different sizes (32x32, 64x64, 128x128, etc...).

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iedncommon

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3 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago enytidge · Accepted Answer

I just ran into the same problem that you did. I messed around with a bunch of settings within my .desktop files to try to get the name to show up in the Unity launcher, since I had created the .desktop files in ~/Desktop then moved them to ~/.local/share/applications

All I had to do to get the Unity application launcher to show the names is log out of Ubuntu and log back in. Pretty lame, I know, but it worked.

At least this shows that in my case (and probably yours too) the .desktop files were not somehow wrong. After all, in my case, the desktop-file-validate program didn't list any errors. There was probably some name cache within Unity that needed to be cleared. It would be more satisfying to know how to do that without logging out, but this workaround is good enough for me for now. Hope this observation helps someone else!