How do I refresh Gnome 3 applications

Question

I just added and modified a .desktop file in my /home/user/.local/share/applications folder.

Is there any way to refresh the icon and caption in the list of applications without logging out?

score 96 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 22 '15 at 14:10

96

You can restart the gnome-shell by pressing Alt+F2 and then typing in either "restart" or just "r" and pressing Enter.

Otherwise I've noticed that it automatically refreshes .desktop files after waiting a little while.

edited Nov 22 '15 at 14:10

don_crissti

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answered Apr 27 '11 at 13:30

XQYZ

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Well, that alt-f2 really made is so I didn't even need to do it. and I did notice that it was refreshing my applications. Now all my applications are gone. I must have messed something up! But there must be cron job to do it then eh? I'll check there. – Peter Turner Apr 27 '11 at 13:41
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Worked perfectly for me – garryp Mar 10 '16 at 18:44
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This will show "Restart is not available on Wayland" as of `gnome-shell-3.20` – lkraav Jun 27 '16 at 22:40
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-1, this doesn't work on Wayland, which is very common nowadays and cannot be ignored in the answer. The message is "Restart is not available on Wayland" , as Ikraav already reported. – ocroquette Dec 17 '22 at 06:50

score 49 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 05 '20 at 01:58

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From Desktop entries in Arch linux wiki, this works on later versions of Gnome:

update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications

edited Feb 05 '20 at 01:58

Paulo Tomé

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answered Feb 04 '20 at 22:41

Caffeine Addict

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it's works on wayland GNOME – mmv-ru Jun 12 '22 at 13:55
This is the correct way of doing it. – Balázs Börcsök Dec 25 '22 at 18:13
sometimes sudo is also needed – Iyad Ahmed Sep 03 '23 at 04:01

score 10 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

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Cross-posting this from the Ubuntu question site.

You need to:

Update the timestamp on the top-level icon directory
Run gtk-update-icon-cache

Note: hicolor is the default theme which app developers should use. if you're making an icon theme, refresh your icon theme's folder instead.

sudo touch /usr/share/icons/hicolor ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor
sudo gtk-update-icon-cache

See (the only documentation I can find for this): https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Scriptlets#Icon_Cache

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

Community

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answered Feb 18 '17 at 18:56

Brendan Long

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when running wayland, doing alt+f2, and then run "r" wont work. This saved me a lot of time. (otherwise have to logout and login again) – Daverix Nov 28 '17 at 11:50
the "touch" trick saves my day! – tai271828 Jan 26 '21 at 09:59

score 8 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 09 '21 at 06:08

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Please refer to the XDG Desktop Menu Specification. To update the list of available desktop launchers in the Applications menu please run:

xdg-desktop-menu forceupdate

The update will be reflected in couple seconds.

answered Apr 09 '21 at 06:08

Petr Stepanov

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I'm not sure why you're downvoted. This is the only thing that worked for me. I would note that it failed silently when I had errors in the Desktop Entry file, but once I had them fixed it worked fine. – Arlen Anderson Jun 08 '21 at 21:57

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited Oct 03 '22 at 00:59

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I tried a few ways, including these posted here, but none worked except this one

gnome-shell --replace & disown

edited Oct 03 '22 at 00:59

Pablo A

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answered Oct 10 '19 at 18:14

micper

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Well.... this worked but it also pooched my Gnome. I got a 'Oh no! Something has gone wrong' message. But the desktop files were updated :-/ – Timothy C. Quinn Dec 17 '20 at 19:58

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 02 '23 at 20:17

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Tried all of the above. Only thing that worked in the end was logging out, and logging back in.

Sometimes it's the simple things that work best.

answered Apr 02 '23 at 20:17

trisweb

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How do I refresh Gnome 3 applications

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