/Flatpak-App-Dir-Icons

A Script To Make Browsing ~/.var/app More Visually Pleasing

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Flatpak AppDir Icons

If you use Flatpak, you're probably familiar with the ~/.var/app directory where your Flatpak apps' data goes...

If you've ever browsed this directory with your GUI file manager, and you have many apps, you might notice that it's kind of a sea of folders with strange tld.domain.App style folder names.

You cannot rename these, it's important they stay as they are!

But Humans are GOOD at recognizing Icons. It's why we use them so prevalently.

So, in an effort to make ~/.var/app more pleasant to browse... a simple shell script to give you Icons.

This also helps you see RIGHT AWAY which of your Flatpak App Directories are still useful and which belong to apps you no longer have installed and/or no longer need.

How Does It Work?

This script works by doing the following.

  1. Analyzing the list of directories in ~/.var/app
  2. Checking for Exported Icons & Binaries in /var/lib/flatpak/exports and $XDG_DATA_HOME/flatpak/exports
  3. Telling your OS what the icons/emblems for the respective folder in ~/.var/app should be.

For desktops relying on gio/gvfs such as GNOME, Cinnamon, etc. It will set the icon and emblem of the file as if you did so yourself by calling gio to manipulate metadata.

For KDE Plasma, it will create a .directory entry specifiying the icon within the app's folder.

This all results in the following

  • App Directories are set to their respective app icons if possible.
  • If the app is uninstalled, it is given the emblem-important emblem (or its icon set to folder-red in KDE's case since it doesn't support emblems)
  • If the app is installed, it is given the emblem-installed emblem (nothing in KDE's case.)
  • If there is a binary, but no Icon, this script assumes it is a command-line program such as ponysay, which is available through Flatpak and will set the folder icon to terminal (utilities-terminal for KDE)

...thus making your App Directories far more pleasant to browse!

You could set this up as a cronjob and forget about it :P

# Update app folder icons in ~/.var/app
*/30 * * * *  flatpak-app-dir-icons

In this case, the job would run every half hour.

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