How to add new desktop shortcut on Raspberry Pi

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To add a new desktop shortcut in Raspbian, right click on the desktop and create new file with “desktop” extension, e.g. MyApp.desktop.

Once you’ve created the file, open it in text editor and add the following content

[Desktop Entry]
Name=App Name
Comment=Some comment
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/openbox.xpm
Exec=/usr/bin/myapp
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Terminal=false

Name – application name
Comment – you can put any comment you wish
Icon – path to icon file to be used for the shortcut
Exec – path to application executable

Save the file and you can use new shortcut to launch your application.

2 thoughts on “How to add new desktop shortcut on Raspberry Pi”

  1. I’ll note that if you’re interested in making a desktop shortcut for an internet website, follow below:
    1) Open terminal
    2) cd /home/pi/Desktop
    3) nano [insertanamehere]
    4) type up your commands, multiple lines are allowed (this is called bash scripting):
    [Desktop Entry]
    Name=Name to be shown on desktop
    Comment=My comment
    Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/openbox.xpm
    Exec=chromium-browser http://www.espn.com -start-fullscreen
    Type=Application
    Encoding=UTF-8
    Terminal=false
    Categories=None;
    5) save by hitting control-x then “Y” followed by ENTER
    6) sudo chmod +x [thenameyouusedearlier]
    7) Go to desktop
    8) There should be a program you can double click on and that will launch

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