Creating an application launcher in Ubuntu

  by Joseph Anthony C. Hermocilla, Principal Consultant

If you use Ubuntu as your primary desktop OS, you might need to create a launcher for applications not installed using apt so that it will be accessible on the dock. This short tutorial will guide you on how to do it. 

Let's say you have Mendeley, a reference manager, as an AppImage application. The first step is to determine the full path of the application.

You can also download a png icon for the app and place it in the path. For example,  I have the following files in the path as shown.

The mendeley.desktop text file contains the following.

[Desktop Entry]

Name=Mendeley

Exec=/home/jachermocilla/Programs/AppImage/mendeley/mendeley-reference-manager-2.97.0-x86_64.AppImage

Type=Application

Icon=/home/jachermocilla/Programs/AppImage/mendeley/mendeley.png

Go to the ~/.local/share/applications directory and create a symbolic link.

The application launcher is now searchable and can now be added to Favorites.