How to create a shortcut on the Raspberry Pi (Raspbian)

Published on December 7, 2020 03:47:00 by Gearloose ‐ In PC ‐ Reading time: less than a minute

While on any Windows / Mac user it's an easy task, for the Raspbian / Linux it is not. Fortunately, you can create a shortcut for an app or a folder easily.

Shortcut for an App

To add a shortcut on the Raspbian desktop, create a file with the ".desktop" extension (start with a dot) and name it as you want: AppName.desktop.

Here is the content of a sample shortcut:
[Desktop Entry] Version=1.1 Type=Application Encoding=UTF-8 Name=MyApp Comment=Open MyApp Icon=/home/pi/documents/my_app_icon.png Exec=/home/pi/documents/MyApp Terminal=false Categories=Accessories

That's it. Now move this file on the desktop and you are done. If you want to start the program with admin rights, add the "sudo" command in the Exec entry:

Exec=sudo /home/pi/documents/MyApp