AppImage Integrator for Linux

Personally I prefer AppImages over Flatpaks because it takes less space. I like to keep them inside /home/user/Apps for an easy access. The issue with portable applications such as the AppImage formats is that they don't appear in the system menu or in the Open With menu in a file manager. For this reason I built this small app that can easily integrate an AppImage into the Linux desktop with just a few clicks.

How does it work

The user can select an AppImage which will be temporarly unpacked to extract the icon and the desktop file. The icon will be copied in .local/share/icons/ and a .desktop file will be created in .local/share/applications. The user can modify the desktop fields such as the application name or pick another icon. The MIME types can be selected using a list of check boxes. These tells the system what file types the application can handle so it can appear in the Open With menu.

Based on the settings inside the Options section, a desktop file can be created, the installed app can be set as default, the app icon can be used for selected MIME types to appear in the KDE file manager instead of the default ones.

💡 Usage

After downloading the AppImage, right-click it and under Properties -> Permissions, check the Execute right. You can integrate the app itself the same way you would with other AppImages.

To easily find your AppImage apps, I recommend placing them under /home/youruser/Apps.

 

📥 Download

The application binary can be downloaded as an AppImage from GitHub in the Releases section. The AppImage is automatically built by Actions using this workflow: .github/workflows/build-appimage.yml. Source code can be fount at https://codeberg.org/silo0074/AppImageIntegrator.git.

 

🔨 Compiling

If you prefer to build the AppImage yourself, you can use the provided automation script: build_appimage.sh.

Clone the repository:

git clone https://codeberg.org/silo0074/AppImageIntegrator.git
cd AppImageIntegrator

Run the script:

./build_appimage.sh