Q: How do I make a Flatpak app I installed become visible or available to Gnome Shell desktop?
A: After installing a Flatpak app, follow these steps to get it visible under 'Show Applications' search and the 'Activities' sidebar
(n.b. I encountered this problem after installing my first Flatpak app, Gittyup. Gittyup was installed, and I could execute it via flatpak run Gittyup, but Gnome Shell would not recognize it.)
- First, locate the app's
.desktopfile, underneath/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications--% ls -l /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications | grep -i <your app name here> - Next, symlink that file so it becomes visible either system-wide, or only to my user account-
- System-wide
% ln -s /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications/com.github.Murmele.Gittyup.desktop /usr/share/applications/.- Only my account
% ln -s ln -s /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications/com.github.Murmele.Gittyup.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/. - Create icon directories
% cd /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/icons/hicolor % ls | xargs -tn 1 -I{} sh -c '[ ! -e "/usr/share/icons/hicolor/{}/apps" ] && \ sudo mkdir -p "/usr/share/icons/hicolor/{}/apps"' - Symlink or copy icons
# Same directory as before % cd /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/icons/hicolor % find * -iname '*.png' -print0|xargs -0tn 1 -I{} sudo cp {} /usr/share/icons/hicolor/{}
Most likely there is a better way of doing this. flatpak override seems one possible path. I did naturally try restarting Gnome Shell, to force rereading of .desktop files" so I did the usual Alt F2 r Enter. However, an app recently installed via CLI didn't appear in the usual app-ish places.
Searching, I see discussions like-
- Where are all the installed flatpak apps .desktop files located #1286
- Improve cli application experience #1188
Flatpak apps mirror the filesystem graph shape found under /usr/share/applications, and it's surprising that they aren't automatically linked over. One day I'll find the answer, but it seems this problemspace lies between Flatpak and desktop environments, so a "Not our problem" problem.
Maybe also: the mechanism that registered /usr/share/applications with Gnome Shell is also available to add /var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications.