Xfce Forum

Ydbil

Member

Registered: 2026-11-08

Posts: 2

How to make the Dropbox folder in Home directory use the icon theme au

Hi everyone,
I have an icon theme that already includes a specific icon for Dropbox (named folder-dropbox).
However, the Dropbox folder inside my Home directory (~/Dropbox) still displays as a generic standard folder, unlike system folders like Documents, Downloads, or Music which automatically get their themed icons.
What is the proper way to make the system/file manager recognize the ~/Dropbox folder and automatically apply the themed folder-dropbox icon to it?

My system details:
• OS: MX Linux
• Desktop Environment: XFCE
• File Manager: Thunar

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 12,735

Re: How to make the Dropbox folder in Home directory use the icon theme au

Hello and welcome.

xdg-user-dirs, which manages specific folder names, does not support dropbox as a location. The only ones that it does recognized are:

DESKTOP
DOWNLOAD
TEMPLATES
PUBLICSHARE
DOCUMENTS
MUSIC
PICTURES
VIDEOS

The ~/.config/xdg-user-dirs.dirs file lets you set to which folder each one of those maps to.

However, if you enable tumbler's folder thumbnailer, you can then put a copy of that icon into the Dropbox folder called folder.jpg (or .folder.jpg if you want it hidden), and then the folder icon will be replaced with that dropbox icon.

Note that this file can be called any one of folder/.folder or cover/.cover with either jpg or png extension.

The folder thumbnailer plugin allows you to replace any folder icon with a specificly named file inside the folder - very useful for other things like album images as folders.

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Ydbil

Member

Registered: 2026-11-08

Posts: 2

Re: How to make the Dropbox folder in Home directory use the icon theme au

Thank you so much for your help. It all worked out!