Tutorial: List your Desktop/Home Screen Applications

Hardware Librem 5
1

A while back, Kyle shared his cron job for creating an automated daily backup list of all installed packages and libraries:

I thought it might also be helpful to be able to list only the desktop/home screen apps, so I created this small utility. It lists applications in the grid, along with various related sub-settings and utilities. Here’s how I did it:

1 - Save the following text in .local/share/applications (within the home folder), and name it AppList.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=AppList
Exec=gnome-terminal -x bash -c "ls /usr/share/applications | awk -F '\\.desktop' ' { print $1}' - | tee applist.txt; exec bash"
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Utilities;
Icon=/home/purism/.local/share/icons/AppList.png

Note that applications created by the user (like this one) are stored in a different directory. If you want to include those in the output list, modify the Exec line to this:
Exec=gnome-terminal -x bash -c "(ls /usr/share/applications && ls /home/purism/.local/share/applications) | awk -F '\\.desktop' ' { print $1}' - | tee applist.txt; exec bash"

2 - Find, or create, an appropriate icon for the launcher, and save it as AppList.png within .local/share/icons. I drew this one with the Drawing application:
AppList

The launcher will then appear in your app grid; top row, far right here:

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Tapping the icon will open the list in the terminal:
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…and also output the list to a text file in your home folder. (It will overwrite itself every time you launch the app):
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(And I have no idea why org.freedesktop.IBus.Panel.Emojier.desktop, org.freedesktop.IBus.Panel.Extension.Gtk3.desktop, org.freedesktop.IBus.Setup.desktop got truncated to org.fre, org.fre, org.fre. They’re not truncated in the terminal display.)

By comparison, using Kyle’s package backup prints a much longer list for my L5 (1,610 lines vs. 118), and includes every individual library and snippet:

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5 Likes
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The argument to awk -F is a regular expression, and the dot (.) in a regular
expression means “match any single character”. So, that means that
org.freedesktop.IBus.Panel.Extension.Gtk3.desktop gets split like so:

   awk sees: org.freedesktop.IBus.Panel.Extension.Gtk3.desktop
   and splits it into:    
    $1 = 'org.fre'
    ('edesktop' matches '.desktop')
    $2 = '.IBus.Panel.Extensions.Gtk3.desktop'

In the ‘Exec’ line of AppList.desktop, try updating like so–
change: awk -F '.desktop' ...
to: awk -F '\\.desktop' ...

(The double-backslash before the dot escapes the dot so it matches only the literal dot character, instead of any character. Caveat: I tested this on my command line and it worked. You might have to fiddle around with the number of slashes when it is inside the .desktop file.)

HTH

PS – Nice hack to only list the desktop apps… :slightly_smiling_face:

3 Likes
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Beautiful! Works like a charm. And it makes sense, since only the .txt file was affected, not the list in the terminal window.
I’ve altered the OP.
Thanks!

2 Likes
4

Why do they still call it “desktop applications”?

Wouldn’t it be better to call a “phone face”?

That would go over well in the U.K. they could market it as “phoney McPhone face”!

Well, they have a tendency to call it a “mobile”, so how about a “mobile mug” ?

5

True, “desktop” is something of a misnomer in this case. I made a couple of modifications to the thread.

6

Ah but convergence. :wink:

Also, the files are presumably going to continue to be called .desktop files regardless.

1 Like
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It was just wordplay on my part, no worries.