HOWTO: Change The Application Menu Icon In Linux
Author: Rees | Date: March 13, 2008
So I’ve been playing with The Ubuntu Hardy Heron Alpha again, and I’m really, really impressed with it. In fact, I’m using it full time on my laptop – I’m even writing this very article from it, sitting in my favourite comfy chair, talking to you via the power of wireless!
Anyway, one thing I always like to do in Gnome is to change the Applications menu icon for something a little more, say, Linuxy… Like everyone’s favourite penguin. It’s dead easy, but everyone else tries to make it sound so complicated. So here’s the dead easy way to do it.
First, you’ll need to download your image. I used this one from Wikipedia as it’s already in the required .svg format, otherwise you’ll have to convert to this format using The GIMP. Don’t just rename the file!
Save the file to your Desktop with the filename start-here.svg and fire up the terminal.
Now you’ll need to find out what icon set you’re using. In Ubuntu this is simply a case of going to System / Preferences / Appearance, clicking the Customize button, and selecting the Icons tab. I’m using the Tango icon theme, but you’ll need to substitute Tango with the name of your icon theme in the following commands.
Okay, so in the Terminal we need to run this:
cd Desktop
sudo cp /usr/share/icons/Tango/scalable/places/start-here.svg start-here-old.svg
sudo cp start-here.svg /usr/share/icons/Tango/scalable/places/
killall gnome-panel
The first command changes to your desktop, the second creates a copy of your old icon on the desktop (for backup purposes), the third line copies the new icon over the top of the existing one, and the final command restarts your gnome panel. Whew!
And that’s it. Enjoy your new icon!
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Oh, I should add that some Ubuntu Gutsy users are reporting that this doesn’t work for them. I don’t know if this is just a Hardy thing or not, so if anyone has any feedback on this method (good or bad), it would be highly appreciated.
This is one of the most popular pages on this blog now so I’d like to make sure I’m not supplying any false information or misleading anyone… This process worked twice for me in the Hardy Heron Alpha but I don’t have a lot of different machines to test it on and I’m not running any other distros / versions at the minute.
The beta released right on schedule on March 24th. The one and only release candidate is due on the 17th of April and then the final release is the 24th. Anyone using the alpha before (myself included) will now find themselves running the beta (after a few updates of course) and won’t need to do anything else other than keep their systems updated to get themselves 8.04 on the day of release.
Exciting stuff, and Hardy is an LTS release, as it rightly should be because it’s great already.
For Gutsy users – it seems Gutsy by default uses the 22×22 icons for the menu bar. So instead of
/usr/share/icons/Tango(or whatever icon theme you use)/scalable/places/
its
/usr/share/icons/Tango(or whatever icon theme you use)/22×22/places/
If you have installed an icon theme of your own these usually appear in /home/(username)/.icons – you have to enable hidden folders in the view menu to find it manually.
Worked for me anyway.
Cheers for that Nick
didn’t work for me, in terminal I just got ‘no such file or directory’
Those commands will only work if you’re using the Tango icon set. You’ll need to go into System / Preferences / Appearance, find out the name of the icons you’re using, and substitute it for Tango in the command.
You are on the wrong path , LOL
Change the icon in
/user/share/icons//24×24/places/start-here.png
or in your case, with Tango,
/user/share/icons/Tango/24×24/places/start-here.png
Then killall gnome-panel
Well, it worked for me but it entirely depends on what version of Gnome you’re using, how your specific distro organises the files, etc.
TBH, there are a lot of things in this post that I should have mentioned that I didn’t. Perhaps I’ll make a new and improved version if there’s enough demand for it.
HOWTO: Change The Application Menu Icon In Linux tutorial is a failure for 8.04 hardy, I did everything exactly, everything copied and backed up just fine, i tried this on every theme icon set that i have, I still have the ubuntu icon in the main menu, I have switched themes, killall gnome-panel, refreshed, rebooted, switched icon sets for every different theme, still no go. wish someone would come out with one solution that actually works.
Might not always be in the “scalable” directory. On Jaunty, and using Oxygen icons, it’s actually the 22×22 that should be changed.