Back in Gnome 2, we can simply right-clicked on a panel and chose “Create custom launcher” to create custom application launchers. But since the advent of Gnome 3, the panels where we add our frequently-used applications have been replaced with the Dash.
Alacarte is a graphical menu editor that lets you edit, add, and delete menu entries. It follows the freedesktop.org menu specification and should work with any desktop environment that uses this specification.
Alacarte is the same menu editor that was available in Gnome 2. The only difference is the way we open it. In Gnome 3, we now select it from the App List.
But first we need to install Alacarte. As root, execute the following command in your terminal:
yum install alacarte
Run Alacarte by searching and clicking it from the Applications menu (it shows up as Main Menu) or executing it from the command line. Doing so should show you this familiar window:
Alacarte - Main Menu
Choose the menu where you want your application to fall under and then click the New Item button.
Alacarte - Create Launcher
In this example, I used the details for the SpringSource Tool Suite, which I just installed, replacing the icon with that of STS (icon.xpm), and pointing the Command to the STS executable file. Then click OK.
Alacarte - Create Launcher with details
That’s it. We’ve created our application launcher. To verify, we can search the STS application launcher we created from the App List.
Gnome 3 Application Search
If you think you’re going to use the launcher frequently, you can simply right-click on it and select Add to Favorites to add it in the Dash.
Gnome 3 - Add to Favorites
Voila! The launcher is now available from the Dash.
The Dash containing the new application launcher
Thanks for an advise, but how to add this application in context menu of nautilus? Because in case of mplayer it doesn’t work. I just want to use mplayer without any gui. I meen as before in gnome 2 — right click on a file and open it with custom command or a program.
Thank you. It’s helpful.
Thanks Randell. With Debian wheezy switching to GNOME 3 this week, this is just what I needed.
thanks a lot! It saves me from a big trouble 🙁
You can also use the Desktop Entry Editor https://github.com/Quixotix/desktop-entry-editor to create the .desktop entries.
I received:
Setting up Install Process
No package alacarte available.
Nothing to do
After typing in “yum install alacarte” :/
I was unable to run alacarte under Fedora 16 until I followed the steps at http://blog.mclaughlinsoftware.com/2011/11/24/gnome-menu-editing-fix/
Thank you, I find the lack of “add to favorites” entries in gnome-shell disturbing 🙂
Thanks for nice post and alacarte menu.
alacarte is not working on Fedora 16 currently. Any other ways?
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=752332
How can I get a favorite entry as a view of the desktop or a view of other than the home directory.
If favorites can have a direct view to the desktop or any other folder, it will disuade me from dropping gnome 3.
There are important reasons for quick access to a folder, particularaly if the folder contains source code and a makefile, while the other folder contains documentation
very much apreciate the helpfull alacarte information.
thankyou john
In the latest ubuntu release, alacarte is already installed as “Main menu”
Thank you so much for writing this post! I’ve been searching for the answer for days now and this is the only solution that worked. 🙂
Thank you! This post has been really helpful!
This works and is a great help. But one thing that is odd and I wish it could be fixed is the shortcuts you create with this don’t show up in the frequent app list.
I searched, off and on, for this simple explanation for several months. For the life of me I cannot understand why gnome.org doesn’t put this in a ‘Getting Started Users Manual’.
Thanks,…no,… really really,…thanks! 🙂
Years later and this is still the best solution, especially with GNOME 3.34 having seriously limited any way to create a launcher.
Thanks Randell. 😉