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In Unity, how do I see the details of a given launcher?

rated 0 times [ 3] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 374 / 2 Years ago, fri, september 23, 2022, 3:16:58

I have a few launchers in Unity that I might want to run as sudo once or twice, but I have no idea what to type into the terminal.

At the moment, crazily, I have to run the app, then search for likely candidates in System Monitor! I don't think the Unity Design team intend, ever, to give us a right-click action on the Dash, or a "Details" option if I right-click on a Launcher, so... how do I figure out what's actually being executed when I run a Launcher?

(for the curious, what I'm struggling with is Desura - it's not in the system path, so I can't just whereis desura, assuming desura is what's actually being run - I'd be guessing)

[EDIT : using the method I marked as the answer, I can see that Desura installs in my home directory and as it's a non-root install, it doesn't update the system path.]

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rieency

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answered 2 Years ago lowovey · Accepted Answer

To read the contents of the launcher file you can open gedit and drag&drop a launcher icon from the dash into it.

Gedit will then display the .desktop file for that launcher which is by the way stored in

/usr/share/applications

in my case for example

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open

[Desktop Entry]

Version=1.0

Type=Application

Name=Desura

GenericName=Game Manager

Comment=Download and play the best games

Exec=/home/daniel/desura/desura %U

TryExec=/home/daniel/desura/bin/desura

Path=/home/daniel/desura

MimeType=x-scheme-handler/desura;

Icon=/home/daniel/desura/data/desura.png

Terminal=false

Categories=Game;

StartupNotify=false

Now just look at the 'Exec=' line in that document in my case

Exec=/home/daniel/desura/desura %U

This will point you to where the executable is stored and tell you the name (desura).

By the way...normally it is neither necessary nor a good idea to run desura in root mode.