Xfce Forum

KitchM

Member

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 300

Items in Settings Manager

What determines what utility will be placed in the Settings Manager?  Xfce has few, but there are many other that tend to appear there depending on the distro used.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,042

Re: Items in Settings Manager

Look at the .desktop file of one of those apps in /usr/share/applications - specifically on the Categories line. You will see something like:

...X-XFCE-SettingsDialog;X-XFCE-PersonalSettings;

X-XFCE-SettingsDialog - specifies that it is to appear in the Settings Manager dialog

X-XFCE-PersonalSettings, X-XFCE-HardwareSettings, and X-XFCE-SystemSettings specifies which category to appear in.

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KitchM

Member

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 300

Re: Items in Settings Manager

How do non-Xfce items get added there?

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,042

Re: Items in Settings Manager

How do non-Xfce items get added there?

Just add the same entries to the categories list of the apps. There is no internal check - it's just an extra labeling element that tells xfce4-settings to display the icon.

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KitchM

Member

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 300

Re: Items in Settings Manager

So this could be part of the package instructions when a new app is installed, if not part of the distro install like in Xubuntu?

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,042

Re: Items in Settings Manager

You could do it both ways, but changing the application's package is harder. Editing the application's .desktop files manually is the best way to ensure that only the applications that you want are listed in proper Settings Manager category. The preferred method here is to copy the .desktop file from /usr/share/applications to ~/.local/share/applications and edit that file.

The other option is to configure the Settings Manager menu to accept different kids of categories. For Xubuntu, this would be to edit the /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/menus/xfce-settings-manager.menu file and make the configuration changes there. You can specify which "categories" should displayed in which Settings Manager area. This won't be as fine tuned as the method above.

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KitchM

Member

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 300

Re: Items in Settings Manager

What I was trying to point out and differentiate was that Xubuntu came with many more items in the Settings Manager than are in the current one under Debian 9.  I actually miss some of the missing ones.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,042

Re: Items in Settings Manager

I don't have a debian 9 install handy to check. Which extra items does Xubuntu have the Debian doesn't?

Compare Debian's /etc/xdg/menus/xfce-settings-manager.menu file with Xubuntu's /etc/xdg/xdg-xubuntu/xfce-settings-manager.menu file and you'll see that Xubuntu configures more application categories and apps to show up in the Settings Manager.

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