Editing the Gnome Applications menu

I have a couple of shell scripts that I run regularly, and currently they reside in a ~/Tasks directory. This means there is always an open window (Terminal or Files) so that I can invoke them easily (after finding this window).

I had this idea that somehow it should be possible to add a Tasks folders to the Applications menu, and call the script from menu items inside Applications, allowing for faster access.

So now I found this answer on AskUbuntu refering to a utility called menulibre, so I quickly installed it using

sudo apt install menulibre

and started it and indeed. it allowed me to add a Tasks folder (called “Directory” in menulibre) and various menu items (called “Launchers”, what would be “shortcuts” in windows) inside it.

Since these are file-based operations, you need to save every single item after editing it – apparently there is no “Save All” mechanism.

Under the hood, the application creates a menulibre-[name].directory file in ~/.local/share/desktop-directories for each directory, and menulibre-[name].desktop files for each item in ~/.gnome/apps and ~./local/share/applications.

The homepage of menulibre is here, and its repository can be found on GitHub.