How to display content of ~/Desktop on desktop

answered 2015-11-29 18:14:09 +0000

fabian
31 ●1 ●2 ●8

updated 2015-11-30 08:33:04 +0000

So here is my solution to display the content of a directory (for me it is ~/Schreibtisch) on your desktop. This solution differentiates only between to types of files: Directories and other. But it's imaginable to add other file types.

You probably won't be able to use my script below whithout doing any changes to it. Especially referring to the ~/Schreibtisch directory used in there and the absolute paths in the lnk files. Maybe I'll upload a more general version of it some day, but I'm quite busy at the moment. Use the script at your own risk.

Please also note that this is more like an alpha version, because it is not tested very well and there are some minor problems when it comes to multi-monitoring (referring to weird repositioning of the icons).

This is what you need:

• inotify-tools
• iDesk
• the script iDeskIcons
• default directory lnk
• default file lnk

And how you set it up:

• put the default directory and file lnk in ~/.idesktop directory and name them dir.default respectively file.default.

• Change the default actions in these lnk files to what you want. Default is launching ranger within terminator for directories and launching xdg-open for files.

• put default icons of your choice in ~/.idesktop/icons and name them dir.png respectively file.png

• put the Script iDeskIcons into a proper directory

• add iDeskIcons to your autostart applications. For example by appending "exec --no-startup-id iDeskIcons" to your i3 config

And there you go!

Again: This is not a foolproof step-by-step guide. Doublecheck the script if it is applicable to your situation first.

And Again thanks to Rotech for the advice.