How to assign special folder icons in XFCE?

Question

I inadvertently deleted my Pictures folder on my linux box running XFCE / Thunar and, after restoring from the trash bin, the folder icon is plain with no camera on it.

How do I get the folder icon back?

In folder properties I just find how to add emblems to the bottom left corner of the icon but it's not the same thing.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Solution 1

Make sure $HOME/.config/user-dirs.dirs contains the line:

XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"

Then restart Thunar.

Solution 2

Here is a more complete $HOME/.config/user-dirs.dirs for anyone that doesn't have the file at all:

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Music"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"

Comments

[sr_]

Hmm... have you tried restarting your session? (I.e. logged out and in again) Could be XDG-related.

[neurino]

Nope, didn't work...

[neurino]

Nor switching between icon sets works, Pictures acts as a normal folder while Videos, Documents, Music etc switch according to theme...

[neurino]

Oh, yes, thanks a lot, but, apart from asking on SE, how's a mortal supposed to know about these magic? It really drove me nut...

[cheshirecatalyst]

I searched Google for [xfce picture folder icon], which lead me to this Gentoo forum page, where someone quoted the Gentoo installation messages that mention $HOME/.config/user-dirs.dirs. I looked in that file and found the XDG_PICTURES_DIR line. I tried playing with it and that seemed to cause the behavior you saw.

[cheshirecatalyst]

Another method that I used was to search the /etc and /home/.config directories for the string Pictures, under the assumption that it was somehow configurable (since yours managed to stop working). Since that's a fairly unique capitalization, it pretty quickly pointed me towards the user-dirs.dirs file either in /home/.config or /etc/xdg.

[neurino]

Ok, it makes sense, I searched Google for the same terms too but had no luck, maybe I did not pay enough attention. Unluckily to me it was not possible to search the string Pictures as it was somehow removed, good idea though. Thanks again