Way to add non-package desktop apps to Walker menu?

[VanWeapon]

I had a look through the official Walker/Elephant docs along with #2835 and while good, it doesn't explain how to add non-packaged apps to the list. There are some desktop applications which wont ever be installed through either the AUR or normal package manager. Discord's desktop app is an example today which might get an AUR in the future, but also stuff like an itch.io game or a github release .tz would be similar. Is there a way to either set up a folder structure or manually add paths that would allow Walker to auto detect these applications and run them like normal packaged apps?
Bonus question, can I also set up certain apps to open via another program like wine when launched through Walker?

[dcunited001]

Walker searches on the Name key from the XDG desktop-entry spec

pkg=nwg-icon-picker

# run this to find the desktop file
pacman -Fl $pkg | grep -re '\.desktop$'

# it's here
desktop=/usr/share/applications/nwg-icon-picker.desktop

# check it to see Name=Icon Picker
cat $desktop

Another app you can run from terminal to compare is nwg-drawer. It doesn't include a desktop file. Once you add the desktop files as below, then walker should pick them up. I just tested by creating one for nwg-drawer.

You need to ensure that the desktop files parse correctly. The format is picky and it depends on the application that's parsing the file (e.g. walker or elephant or nwg-drawer). Usually when applications don't show up, they fail to parse or the application attempting to run them refuses. Setting custom environment variables can be problematic.

There are some packages you can search for that help to create desktop files with a GUI, but it's just simpler with nvim or a text editor. It probably won't handle environment variables. You may want to back up the ones you created somewhere in case you reinstall. IMO, the correct place is in a package, with GNU Stow or with a script, but that's more advanced.

Adding Desktop Files

If you want to add a desktop file:

• Read through the XDG specification so you understand how it uses parameters like %u and %U (for URI and list of URIs respectively). See Exec key
• Then add a .desktop file to $XDG_DATA_HOME/applications which is ~/.local/share/applications.

# vars from above
newdesktop=$XDG_DATA_HOME/applications/nwg-drawer.desktop
cp $desktop $newdesktop

# open it in the editor
nvim $newdesktop

• Remove the internationalization you don't need. You could also do this with sed -ie and a regexp.
• Set Name, Exec, Categories and Icon
• If it should open file(s) or URI(s), ensure Exec references %f, %F, %u or %U. The file variables are a bit safer. The specification is supposed to handle quoting, but it's important to understand.

For nwg-drawer, it should look like this. Use nwg-icon-picker to find an icon. Using a name from the yaru theme ensures it will match the Omarchy theme.

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=NWG Drawer
GenericName=Application Menu
Comment=Application drawer for sway and other wlroots-based compositors
Exec=nwg-drawer
Icon=view-app-grid-symbolic
Terminal=false
Categories=Utility;

Wine Apps

For me, Steam sometimes adds the Wine apps to XDG_DATA_HOME. If that's happening for some games you install, open up the desktop file and check the Exec= line to see how it launches.

One tricky part here is setting the correct environment variables in case you need to set custom steam variables.

Webapps

When omarchy installs a webapp, it uses the script omarchy-webapp-install

# $OMARCHY_PATH may be undefined for you, but it's in ~/.local/share/omarchy
# just don't change the files in there...
script=$(fd 'omarchy-webapp-install' $OMARCHY_PATH)
cat "$script"

And it installs new .desktop files into $XDG_DATA_HOME, saving the favicon as an icon. The way it sets these up makes the app feel native.

[VanWeapon]

The Exec line solved it for me. In my case with Discord as an example, i just moved discord.desktop from where i installed it to $XDG_DATA_HOME/applications/discord.desktop then changed Exec to point to where the app was actually located and that solved it.

[dcunited001]

XDG would search these directories for .desktop files

echo "$XDG_DATA_HOME:$XDG_DATA_DIRS" | tr ':' '\n' | sed -e 's/$/\/applications/g'

/home/me/.local/share/applications
/home/me/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share/applications
/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications
/usr/local/share/applications
/usr/share/applications
/home/me/.nix-profile/share/applications
/nix/var/nix/profiles/default/share/applications

So you can iterate through them or whatever to find examples (or just use pacman -Fl $pkg as above)

# this is kinda hacky
dirs=$(echo "$XDG_DATA_HOME:$XDG_DATA_DIRS" | tr ':' '\n' | sed -e 's/$/\/applications/g')
for d in $dirs; do
 [[ -d "$d" ]] && fd '\.desktop' $d;
done

[AndrijaSkontra]

Can we have something like this in the docs?