How to run and create desktop entries for AppImages
Table of Contents
Linux offers various methods for installing software packages. While many
applications are available through your distribution’s official repositories,
alternative package formats like Snap, Flatpak, and AppImage provide additional
options. In this tutorial, we’ll focus on AppImages, demonstrating how to
install the Cursor
application and create a desktop shortcut for easy access.
Install and run the appImage #
Install the package and make the file executable.
chmod +x cursor-<foo>.AppImage
Then run the image.
./cursor-<foo>.AppImage
- or double click on the file within your file manager.
And that’s it! Now let’s make a shortcut to that file.
Create a desktop shortcut #
Download the following image. This will be the icon for our app.
Move the appimage and icon to the /opt/cursor
directory.
sudo mkdir /opt/cursor
sudo mv ~/Downloads/cursor-<foo>.AppImage /opt/cursor/cursor.appimage
sudo mv ~/Downloads/cursor.png /opt/cursor/cursor.png
Create the file for the desktop entry.
sudo touch /usr/share/applications/cursor.desktop
Paste in the following to the file.
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Cursor
Exec=/opt/cursor/cursor.appimage
Icon=/opt/cursor/cursor.png
Type=Application
Categories=Development;
Now you should be able to find the app in your applications menu!
Create a command within the terminal #
Create a link from appimage location to the bin directory.
sudo ln -s /opt/cursor/cursor.appimage /usr/local/bin/cursor
Now there’s an issue, if you close the terminal from where you run the command, the application will close. In order to fix this we need to run this command.
setsid cursor <path_to_directory> &
Now you’ll be able to close the terminal and the application will still run.
Create an alias #
You can run the command above each time or create an alias inside your
.<bash|zsh>rc
file.
cursor() {
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
echo "Usage: cursor <path_to_directory>"
return 1
fi
setsid /usr/local/bin/cursor "$@" &
}
- You can name the function differently if you plan to use the cursor appimage itself.