Nautilus – How to Programmatically Change a File’s Icon?

filesiconsnautilusscripts

If I select an icon in Nautilus and select Properties, I can click on the icon presented there. This gives me a file-chooser dialog to select a new icon image.

I would like to do this via a script of some sort so that I can assign the same icon to many files at once. Or take a list of icons and a list of files and assign them to each other.

Is there some way I can accomplish this? Something in bash or Python would be great, but I'll take what I can get.

Please note:

  • I am not asking how to change the icon for a file type.
  • I am not asking how to change an icon on the launcher.

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Best Answer


To change those icons from the command line, you can use the following command:

gvfs-set-attribute -t string /path/to/your/file metadata::custom-icon file:///path/to/your/icon.png

You can use this command in a bash script according to your needs.

If you run the command and the icon does not change immediately, you can install the xautomation package with:

sudo apt-get install xautomation

And finally, use the command "xte" to "sendkey" in bash like "F5" to refresh..
A little example would be:

#!/bin/bash
gvfs-set-attribute -t string /home/hermes/testicon metadata::custom-icon file:///home/hermes/Desktop/applet_blank.png
sleep 3
xte "key F5"

I hope this is useful for you.

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