How do I make an application manually extracted from a .tar be available on "Show Applications"?

I want my application that is portable extract from a .tar, like PopcornTime to be available in the "Show applications" in Ubuntu Bionic Beaver (18.04).

I extract my application in some folder and to run it, i used to run

./folder/'ApplicationRunnable'

I realize that is a lot easier to click on icon, that i created by using to following commands:

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends gnome-panel
gnome-desktop-item-edit --create-new ~/Desktop

But in my "Show Application" search, my application can't be found...

How can I make this kind of application appears on my "Show Applications" search?

3 Answers

If you already have a .desktop file copy it into ~/.local/share/applications.

If not, see this guide on how to create one.

In general you need to create a .desktop launcher for the application in your ~/.local/share/applications directory.

To create a simple .desktop launcher by hand, first create an empty text file, name it <application-name>.desktop, and add the following lines to it

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Application Name
Comment=A short description of the application
Exec=/full/path/to/'ApplicationRunnable'
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=/full/path/to/icon-file

Then save the file. If it doesn't appear in 'Show Applications', log out and re-login.

In particular if you already have a working .desktop launcher (created with the GUI tool gnome-desktop-item-edit) in your ~/Desktop, then just copy it to ~/.local/share/applications.

Copy the .desktop file generated with gnome-desktop-item-edit in /usr/share/applications