Ubuntu 11.04 – How to Add Computer Place to Unity Launcher

I recently upraded to Ubuntu 11.04. I wanted to hate the Unity interface…really I did. I tried, but I actually find it pretty cool…now that I can customize it.

First, a screenshot of my desktop:

The wallpaper can be found here:Wallpaper
and the icon set here:Icons

What can I say? i like monochrome…it matches everything!

I wanted to add an entry to the Unity Launcher Home / File Browser icon which would give me this:

The Unity Launcher items are configured through standard .desktop files. These files originate in /usr/share/applications. The customize them, copy the file you want, such as nautilus-computer.desktop, to ~/.local/share/applications with this command:

cp /usr/share/applications/nautilus-computer.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/

Now open the file at ~/.local/share/applications/nautilus-computer.desktop with an editor like gedit:

gedit ~/.local/share/applications/nautilus-computer.desktop

You should see something like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Computer
Comment=Browse all local and remote disks and folders accessible from this computer
TryExec=nautilus
Exec=nautilus --no-desktop computer:
Icon=computer
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=true
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Core;
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=GNOME
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=nautilus
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=general
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version=2.32.2
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=nautilus

What I did was to add an entry for this to my nautilus.desktop file to create a Shortcut Group sub-item in the Home launcher:

There is a good list of Custom Unity launchers and Quicklists at AskUbuntu.com. Building on instructions I found there, I added the nautilus-computer entry to my nautilus.desktop file, which now looks like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Folders
Comment=Open your folders
TryExec=nautilus
Exec=nautilus --no-desktop
Icon=user-home
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=true
Type=Application
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Core;
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=GNOME
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=nautilus
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=general
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=nautilus

X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=Computer;Videos;Documents;Music;Pictures;Downloads;Root
Name[en_US]=Folders

[Computer Shortcut Group]
Name=Computer
Exec=nautilus --no-desktop computer:
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Videos Shortcut Group]
Name=Videos
Exec=nautilus Videos
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Documents Shortcut Group]
Name=Documents
Exec=nautilus Documents
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Music Shortcut Group]
Name=Music
Exec=nautilus Music
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Pictures Shortcut Group]
Name=Pictures
Exec=nautilus Pictures
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Downloads Shortcut Group]
Name=Downloads
Exec=nautilus Downloads
TargetEnvironment=Unity

[Root Shortcut Group]
Name=Root Browser
Exec=gksu nautilus
TargetEnvironment=Unity

…and that’s pretty much it.

Additionally, a quick way to add an icon to the launcher is to open an application (by using Alt+F2 and typing the command, or hitting the Super key and searching for it, or hitting Super and then clicking “More Apps –> Installed”), and then right-clicking the icon when it appears in the launcher. You will get a menu like this:

…which adds a check mark and makes it stick.

Enjoy Unity!

P.S. In case you’re interested, here’s my conkyrc file. Right-click and Save Link As…

I’ll do a proper post on conky soon.