Sample desktop files for GNOME desktop

Examples are based on Free Desktop standards and demonstrate the most common uses of desktop files, but not all.

Paths

User-space .desktop files can override the system wide in the typical way.

/home/alex/.local/share/applications/foo.desktop

Will override

/usr/share/applications/foo.desktop

Therefore we can add additional actions on apps.

/home/alex/.local/share/applications/firefox.desktop

Add some quick links on Firefox

...
Actions=open-google-youtube;open-gmail;

[Desktop Action open-youtube]
Name=YouTube
Exec=firefox https://www.youtube.com/

[Desktop Action open-gmail]
Name=YouTube
Exec=firefox https://www.gmail.com/
...

Best practices

For quickly creating custom application files, create a desktop template on Gnome templates directory

$HOME/Templates/newDesktop.desktop

Then on

$HOME/.local/share/applications/

Right click in Gnome Files, New Document-> newDesktop and modify it!