Create desktop icon for AppImage files

making a .desktop file with a proper icon for AppImage apps like FreeCAD so they don’t all show the same cog icon in the dock

Why? Because it gets difficult to differentiate between open apps when all have the same cog icon.

I will use FreeCAD as an example program here. On my system I have a folder at ~/Applications where i keep all the AppImage files. The icons for all the executable are kept in ~/Applications/icons.

• Create a .desktop file under ~/.local/share/applications/ for user or ~/.local/share/applications/ for system
• Download an icon (SVG/AVIF files work fine)
• The Exec and Icon path values can be anywhere on the system, but you need to provide an absolute path
• Exec path should be an executable file, i.e. chmod +x the file
• Validate the file with desktop-file-validate ~/.local/share/applications/freecad.desktop
• Update the database with update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/

1touch ~/.local/share/applications/freecad.desktop

1[Desktop Entry]
2Type=Application
3Name=FreeCAD
4Comment=An open source parametric 3D CAD modeler
5Icon=/home/amna/Applications/icons/FreeCAD.svg
6Exec=/home/amna/Applications/FreeCAD.AppImage
7Categories=Graphics;Engineering

1# provide the path for .desktop file
2desktop-file-validate ~/.local/share/applications/freecad.desktop

1# provide the path for the entire directory, not the file
2update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/