Ubuntu – Duplicate icons for manually created GNOME launcher items

aptana-studiodesktopgnomegnome-shell

I have downloaded Aptana Studio 3 and created the following launcher item for using Alacarte:

file: alacarte-made.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Comment=
Terminal=false
Name=Aptana Studio 3
Exec=AptanaStudio3
Type=Application
Icon=/opt/Aptana-Studio-3/icon.xpm

Then, when I add the icon to the favorites and opens the Aptana Studio 3 I get two icons for it, one for launching new instances, and one for the currently running instance as per the following screenshot:

How do I force the application to use the same icon added to the favorites?

Best Answer

To save sifting through the thread mentioned by @earthmeLon, you need to do the following:

Launch the application
Fire up a terminal and run xprop WM_CLASS. Click on the window of the the application that is running with a duplicate icon.
You'll get some output like WM_CLASS(STRING) = "Navigator", "Firefox". Choose one of the classes, eg Firefox in this example
Add the class as the value of StartupWMClass in the .desktop file. For example, StartupWMClass=Firefox
Save the .desktop file, close the application and re-open it. There should now only be 1 icon in the launcher

For 11.04 and earlier:

Unity does support custom launchers from .desktop files. To create custom launcher from a .desktop file you need to create a *.desktop file for your program.

gedit ~/.local/share/applications/name.desktop

The .desktop file should look something like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=the name you want shown
Comment=
Exec=command to run
Icon=icon name
Terminal=false
Type=Application
StartupNotify=true

In your file manager open your home folder and navigate to: (You may need to press ctrl+h to show hidden files to see the .gconf directory.)

.gconf-> desktop-> unity-> launcher -> favourites

you'll see a bunch of folders starting with "app-". you need to create a folder for your program. Use the same name.desktop you used in /usr/share/applications. Go into 1 of the folders for something that is already on the dock & copy the xml file and paste that into your new folder. Open it with your text editor and change the name of the *.desktop to your name.desktop.

Open gconf-editor (you can open gconf by running the command gconf-editor in the Terminal) & go to:

desktop-> unity-> launcher -> favorites

Double click the list on the right & add your name.desktop.

Log out & back in and you should see your launcher. (thank you kerry_s on the Ubuntu Forums for helping with this answer)

Unity also has a feature called Lenses. By default, you have two in Unity: Applications and Files. In the future, you will be able to install and create a lot more. There is some info about that on the Ubuntu wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/Lenses

Ubuntu – How to make a Matlab launcher for Unity

Garrett's answer almost works for me, but instead I have to use

StartupWMClass=sun-awt-X11-XFramePeer

This still gives an extra launcher icon while the splashscreen is visible (because the WM_CLASS of the spashscreen is just "MATLAB"), but then the window gets properly grouped under the launcher.

New instances of Matlab (started by terminal, or Synapse, or from another tty with export DISPLAY=:0) also get grouped under this launcher, and the launcher's quit option kills all of them.

I found this WM_CLASS value by using

$ xprop WM_CLASS

and then clicking on the Matlab window, a command I got from Superuser.

To prevent the temporary extra launcher icon, you can also add the -nosplash flag after the -desktop one.

So, my ~/.local/share/applications/MATLAB.desktop looks like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Icon=matlab
Name=Matlab
Comment=Start MATLAB - The Language of Technical Computing
Exec=matlab -desktop -nosplash
Terminal=false
Categories=Development;
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=sun-awt-X11-XFramePeer
X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=New_Window;

Name[en_US]=MATLAB

[New_Window Shortcut Group]
Name=start a new MATLAB instance
Exec=matlab -desktop

This is on Ubuntu 12.10, with Matlab R2012b

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to edit/create new launcher items in Unity by hand

For 11.04 and earlier:

Ubuntu – How to make a Matlab launcher for Unity

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