Linux Mint: Add entries to the start menu

How can I add entries to the Linux Mint start menu?

A few applications are only available for Linux as a “portable version” as a ZIP archive. Such as my Git application “SmartGit“.

Simply unpack and then start. But it’s cumbersome, so I would have liked to add the programme to the “Start menu”.

Video

Where can I find the programme shortcuts

The Start menu entries are located in the following folder:

/usr/share/applications

These are text files with the file extension “.desktop”.

These can therefore be easily opened with a text editor. The content looks like this, for example, for FileZilla:

We see that the thing has a name, different languages are also possible. We can define an icon, etc.

Here is a template for creating a new entry:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=SmartGIT
GenericName=SmartGIT
Exec=/home/da/Tools/smartgit/bin/smartgit.sh
Terminal=true
Icon=/home/da/Tools/smartgit/bin/smartgit-64.png
Type=Application
Categories=Programming;
Version=1.0

We can see here that we are running a shell script, Terminal is set to “True”, i.e. another terminal opens. Otherwise enter “False” here.

Let’s create the template, e.g. with the VIM editor:

sudo vim /usr/share/applications/SmartGit.desktop

We now add our customised template here and save it.

Done! The entry then appears in the Start menu.