Ubuntu – Add Vim to Unity launcher

You can get Intellij to generate the icon in /usr/share/applications for you to copy to your launcher:

1. Open a terminal, in idea/bin folder
2. Start IntelliJ with ./idea.sh
3. Tools -> Generate Desktop Entry
4. Close IntelliJ
5. In the terminal, start nautilus as admin (gksudo nautilus)
6. Go to /usr/share/applications
7. Drag the new icon for IntelliJ to your launcher

I actually made a script for that. It places the icon down in the launcher, but with a minor change, you can put it at the top (or any other position) as well.

As it is, it is in python2, but simply change the shebang to #!/usr/bin/env python3 if you'd like to use it as python3. The code is identical.

To use it, the .desktop file needs to be in either /usr/share/applications or in ~/.local/share/applications, but usually that is the case.

How to use

• copy the script below, save it as launcher_add.py
• make it executable

Run it by the command:

/path/to/launcher_add.py name_of_desktopfile.desktop 

you have to use the filename of the .desktop file, without the path.

The script

#!/usr/bin/env python

import subprocess
import sys

desktopfile = sys.argv[1]

def current_launcher():
    get_current = subprocess.check_output(["gsettings", "get", "com.canonical.Unity.Launcher", "favorites"]).decode("utf-8")
    return eval(get_current)

def add_new(desktopfile):
    curr_launcher = current_launcher()
    last = [i for i, x in enumerate(curr_launcher) if x.startswith("application://")][-1]
    new_icon = "application://"+desktopfile
    if not new_icon in curr_launcher:
        curr_launcher.insert(last, new_icon)
        subprocess.Popen(["gsettings", "set", "com.canonical.Unity.Launcher","favorites",str(curr_launcher)])
    else:
        pass

add_new(desktopfile)

The script prevents multiple occasions in the launcher list of the same application, which would cause corruption of he list.