/iconize

A terminal command that allows you to create launchers for your Ubuntu apps.

Primary LanguageGoMIT LicenseMIT

iconize

A terminal command that allows you to create launchers for your Ubuntu apps.

Example

path/to/iconize -n "Sublime Text" -p /home/marco/Desktop/sublime/sublime -i /home/marco/Desktop/sublime/Icon/256x256/sublime_text.png

Note: If you want to be able to use iconize from any directory without indicating the path to the executable, just type:

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/iconize' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Then you'll be able to call iconize from any directory:

iconize -n "Sublime Text" -p /home/marco/Desktop/sublime/sublime -i /home/marco/Desktop/sublime/Icon/256x256/sublime_text.png

Options

iconize wants a name (flag -n) to be used as a display name for the launcher, and a path (flag -p) to the executable that actually starts the app.

If name contains multiple words it has to be enclosed by double quotes.

You can also provide a custom icon for the launcher (flag -i).

Type iconize -h for help.

How it works

iconize just creates a reasonable Desktop Entry inside ~/.local/share/applications. The entry is named based on the -n flag, but note that the name you provide will be lower-cased and spaces will be reaplaced with hyphens (e.g. Sublime Text -> sublime-text.desktop).

Alternatives

iconize is just a personal excuse to learn a little bit of Go.

Alacarte and MenuLibre are more powerful solutions and also have a graphical user interface.