Applications Menu – How to Add System-Wide Menu Item

application-developmentappmenumenu

I have manually installed a software to /opt and I wanted to add it to the Applications menu.

Although Ubuntu makes it dead easy to add it to my user's menu, how do I add it system wide, so that all users will see the application in their menu?

Best Answer

You can create the proper .desktop file and place it in /usr/share/applications which is the global place for applications.

It would like something like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Sample Application Name
Comment=A sample application
Exec=/opt/application
Icon=application.png
Terminal=false
Categories=Application

Name will set the name that appears in the menu, and Category will place it in a certain category in the menu. Exec is the command to start the program, it uses full paths and can also take parameters. You can open the other .desktop files in /usr/share/applications with a text editor to get an idea.

For more info: desktop-files

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