Change executable reference for app icon in in GNOME 3 launcher

Question

I've created a custom script to launch VirtualBox that replaced the original script in ¸/usr/bin/¸. So running VirtualBox in a terminal launches my script. However, pressing super key and type "virtualbox" in Gnome Shell launcher brings the old original script.

How can I change that behavior so that when I type virtualbox in Gnome Shell launcher my custom script runs?

Solution

Look for the file /usr/share/applications/virtualbox.desktop. On my system, it has the following contents:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=1.0
Name=Oracle VM VirtualBox
GenericName=Virtual Machine
Type=Application
Exec=VirtualBox %U
...

Simply change the Exec part to point to your custom executable/script.

See also

Thomas Nyman's answer to a similar question.

Comments

[Rombus]

Perfect! thanks. The thing that's weird is that when I run the command "locate virtualbox.desktop" the output was empty.

[Jeff Hewitt]

@Rombus No that's not weird. It just means your locatedb isn't up-to-date. You need to run updatedb first. See man locate.