Changing Launch Icons in Linux Mint

By Martin Jansen, Owner of Jansen-PCINFO

Many open source software manufacturers are releasing self contained single file programs called AppImages.  Some of the software available in AppImage for Linux Mint are:  MuseScore for music composition, OpenShot video editor, Audacity audio editor and Krita for drawing.

All I do is download the file to the Desktop and change the permissions to executable.  Here’s an image of the permissions in MuseScore:

No installation necessary, the program just works as expected.  One problem though: The icon associated with the AppImage is just a gear – not inspiring at all. Here’s what the OpenShot AppImage looks like:

It’s not obvious how to change the gear icon into something more appealing.  At least it wasn’t to me.  I thought I would right click and go into properties looking under emblems, but that was very limited and only changed the icon a little like this one for Audacity:

The answer was indeed to go into properties under the Basic tag and click on the gear icon.  I went to the Applications and saw hundreds of icons in alphabetical order.  Scrolling down, I select the openshot icon:

I did have to refresh the screen by pressing down the F5 key before the icon changed to this:

It’s so much easier now to find the icon on my desktop.  Function plus form, the best of both worlds.