Desktop Integration Guide

Desktop integration lets your AppImages appear in your desktop application launcher automatically. When enabled, fp-appimage-updater extracts the .desktop manifest and icons directly from the AppImage using --appimage-extract, then installs them into the correct user directories.

What gets installed

File type	Destination
`.desktop` file	`~/.local/share/applications/`
App icons	`~/.local/share/icons/`

The Exec and Icon paths inside the .desktop file are automatically updated to point to the installed AppImage location, so your launcher always uses the correct binary path.

Desktop integration requires the AppImage to support --appimage-extract. Virtually all modern AppImages support it.

Enable or disable globally

Desktop integration is enabled by default. Set manage_desktop_files in your config.yml to control it globally:

manage_desktop_files: true

To disable integration for all apps:

manage_desktop_files: false

Disable per app

To opt a single app out of desktop integration, set integration: false in its recipe:

name: myapp
integration: false
strategy:
  strategy: direct
  url: "https://example.com/myapp.AppImage"
  check_method: etag

If the app doesn’t appear immediately in your launcher after updating, run update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications to refresh the application menu cache.

Last modified on April 17, 2026

Management & Utilities

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Help & Troubleshooting

What gets installed

Enable or disable globally

Disable per app

​What gets installed

​Enable or disable globally

​Disable per app

What gets installed

Enable or disable globally

Disable per app