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@ John Dee
2025-02-17 17:39:31
I keep a large collection of music on a local file server and use [DeaDBeeF](https://deadbeef.sourceforge.io/) for listening. I've never been able to pin DeadBeeF to the dock in Ubuntu, and it's always had the ugly default icon.
I asked DeepSeek for help, and it turned out to be easier than I thought.
1. Create `~/.local/share/applications/deadbeef.desktop`:
```bash
[Desktop Entry]
Name=DeadBeeF Music Player
Comment=Music Player
Exec=/home/user/Apps/deadbeef-1.9.6/deadbeef
Icon=/home/user/Apps/deadbeef-1.9.6/deadbeef.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=AudioVideo;Player;
```
1. Make `deadbeef.desktop` executable:
```bash
chmod +x ~/.local/share/applications/deadbeef.desktop
```
And just like that, DeadBeeF has an icon and I can pin it to the dock.
`.desktop` files are part of the [Freedesktop.org standards](https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/). They're used in most popular desktop environments like GNOME, KDE and XFCE.
Tor Browser has the same issue, but it comes with a `.desktop` file already, so it only needs to by symlinked to the applications folder:
```
ln -s ~/Apps/tor-browser/start-tor-browser.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
```