HOWTO: Add menu items to XFCE on Slackware

arfon · 07-31-2023, 04:50 AM

1) Create a desktop shortcut to the program (on the desktop).

HOW TO GET THE ITEM TO APPEAR IN THE CORRECT MENU CATEGORY
2) Open the .desktop file in a text editor.
3) Add "Categories=xxxxxxxx;" Where xxxxxxxx is the menu sub category you want it in. e.g "development;"

ADD SYSTEM WIDE:
4) Copy that .desktop shortcut to /usr/share/applications/

ADD FOR JUST ONE USER
4) Create ~/.local/share/applications/ and copy the .desktop shortcut there.

enigma9o7 · 07-31-2023, 10:20 PM

THhnks so much! I never woulda been able to find that information everywhere else if you hadn't posted it. Before reading this I would have expected xfce on slackware to somehow do something differently than every other desktop and distro that follows xdg desktop spec and wouldn't have trusted what I read. Thanks so much for letting us know it behaves normally, who woulda guessed!

arfon · 07-31-2023, 11:49 PM

Quote:

I never woulda been able to find that information everywhere else if you hadn't posted it.

I've been looking for how to do this for YEARS and could never get an answer. Finally a few people have posted the info online and I figured it out so, I'm sharing.

Now I need to figure out how to write XFCE applets.

solarfields · 08-01-2023, 05:08 AM

How to hide unwanted menu entries? Add:
NoDisplay=true

Do you want to have a custom structured Xfce menu?
https://slackalaxy.com/2012/11/15/custom-xfce-menu/

How about multilevel menu?
https://slackalaxy.com/2021/08/08/xfce-multilevel-menu/

Note, OpenOffice.org from SBo does that:
https://slackbuilds.org/repository/1...penoffice.org/

arfon · 08-01-2023, 10:15 AM

TY solarfields!

I'm adding this to my notes!

selfprogrammed · 08-01-2023, 03:24 PM

There is no way to click on "found this post helpful" for the original post.
Thank you, as I won't have to research this myself now.

I want to kill off the EMACS entry !

solarfields · 08-01-2023, 04:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by selfprogrammed

There is no way to click on "found this post helpful" for the original post.
Thank you, as I won't have to research this myself now.

I want to kill off the EMACS entry !

click in "rate this thread" and give him max stars

rkelsen · 08-01-2023, 06:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by arfon

ADD SYSTEM WIDE:
4) Copy that .desktop shortcut to /usr/share/applications/

Yes. This works for KDE as well.

If you like to keep things separated, you can also use: /usr/local/share/applications/

elcore · 08-02-2023, 03:11 AM

If you know how XML works, you can write to /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu
I've done this to get rid of categories, I just put stuff I use the most in X-Xfce-Toplevel

dchmelik · 08-04-2023, 03:37 AM

In this topic, how do I add back the 'other' menu? It always has many items in it (I don't remove any) but it intermittently disappears and reappears in XFCE over several sessions.

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arfon · 08-09-2023, 01:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dchmelik

In this topic, how do I add back the 'other' menu? It always has many items in it (I don't remove any) but it intermittently disappears and reappears in XFCE over several sessions.

The best I can figure out on this is that

Code:

/etc/xdg/menus/xfce-applications.menu

...is where these menus are created system-wide.

The OTHER category says:

Code:

<Menu>
  <Name>Other</Name>
    <Directory>xfce-other.directory</Directory>
      <OnlyUnallocated/>
        <Include>
          <All/> 
        </Include>
</Menu>

So that is saying that if any apps are NOT placed in one of the directories of the other sub-menus -or- does not have a CATEGORIES parameter that matches the listed categories, then place it in OTHER. It's a catch-all.

If OTHER is appearing and disappearing, it's probably because you're adding/removing applications which do not fit into the other categories.

I may be wrong but, that's what it looks like to me.