Sometimes I find an application very easily in the native Launcher, or even a third-party one like Synapse; but locating the corresponding app (or at least its .desktop file, which contains the path to the app binary) is very difficult.
Unlike Windows, right-clicking on a desktop icon, whether in the side bar/panel or native Launcher does not offer an Open Location command (at least on Unity desktop; if it works on Gnome or some other desktop, please tell me which). Even on Windows it's not great: this will send you to the Shortcut file (equivalent of .desktop file). Then you must right-click > Open Target Location again. But it's feasible entirely via GUI, in 4 clicks.
Similarly, third-party launchers like Synapse and Ulauncher don't display the full path besides the app name.
As a workaround, I have to resort to these workarounds each time:
A. Open one of the Desktop applications folder:
/usr/share/applications/
~/.local/share/applications/
and do a deep search (Ctrl+F) for a certain app name. Hopefully the .desktop file is named like the app and this works.
One day, when looking for an AppImage I was a little too quick and did a typeahead search (legacy Nautilus behavior when you press a letter directly without Ctrl+F, which can be restored with ppa:lubomir-brindza/nautilus-typeahead). However the desktop file name was prefixed with "appimagekit-" so I missed it... You really need full search to be sure, although other desktop files should be fine.
B. Go to /, then:
$ locate *.desktop | grep appname
or
$ locate appname.desktop
if you're sure the desktop file name ends with appname
Again, the desktop file must be named properly.
C. If all else fails, the desktop file is probably badly named, and you must search for the app name inside .desktop text inside each file.
Any command will do (rg, ag, ack... even opening folder in VS Code and running a full search)
but all come down to the same: manually searching for a string inside a set of folders.
In addition, once I have found the .desktop file, I must still open it in some editor and read the target path to finally find the application binary.
Is there not a way to locate a specific .desktop file (or better, the app directly) while it's shown right in front of me in the side bar/panel or the Launcher/Dash? It would be a much more natural, and efficient, approach to me.
