Gnome 3 and .desktop files - What exactly does "Allow/Disallow lauching do"?

Question

I know that when creating a .desktop file, one can set the metadata::trusted as true and false, in order to be able to launch the icon as an executable. What is intriguing me however is the fact that:

1. When right-clicking on the .desktop file and "Allow launching" apparently the only thing it does is to set the metadata::trusted to true. The icon, however, changes, as expected, instantly to the icon described in the .desktop file Icon=.

2. However when setting the metadata::trusted to either false or true via command-line the icon doesn't seem to change its behavior $ gio set android-studio.desktop metadata::trusted false

Once I refresh the Desktop manually (Alt + F2 >> restart) the environment refreshes and the icon turns to be executable again, BUT the whole environment is restarted.

So, What does exactly "Allow/Disallow launching" does after setting the metadata::trusted? How does it refresh the metadata in the .desktop itself without refreshing the whole Desktop?

Lackluster

Answer 1

Your question is exactly the same as what I'm looking for.

On Ubuntu 18.04 (GNOME 3.28):

dbus-launch gio set file.desktop "metadata::trusted" yes

and (although this is not quite what you need)

killall nautilus-desktop && nautilus-desktop & disown

Ubuntu 20.04 (GNOME 3.36):

dbus-launch gio set file.desktop "metadata::trusted" true

but no nautilus-desktop...

dbus-send --type=method_call --print-reply --dest=org.gnome.Shell /org/gnome/Shell org.gnome.Shell.Eval string:'global.reexec_self()'

or something like systemd*...

Look at this code:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/commit/1630f5348

and here search "trusted":

https://download.gnome.org/core/3.36/3.36.2/sources/

nautilus-3.36.2/src/nautilus-file-operations.c

nautilus-3.36.2/src/nautilus-mime-actions.c

Cosine

interesting, thanks for replying this. I still havent figured out lol – Lackluster

Answer 2

It may turns out to be simpler. From desktop-file-utils.

man desktop-file-install

For example:

desktop-file-install --mode=0755 --dir=$HOME/Desktop /path/to/source/file.desktop

Cosine

Sorry but this command put a "non launchable" icon on the Desktop. So there is still no answer to the question: how to refresh the desktop with the right icon and make the starter launchable? – Paronymous

Answer 3

Quiet interesting, I've used combination of the two previous answers in order to "Allow Launching" .desktop file located at my desktop within Kali Linux 2022 with GNOME Shell:

desktop-file-install --mode=0755 --dir=$HOME/Desktop ~/Desktop/Telegram.desktop
dbus-launch gio set ~/Desktop/Telegram.desktop "metadata::trusted" true

Note the order of the execution of the commands is important!

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• Here is similar topic at Ask Ubuntu: .desktop files - Allow launching - set this via CLI.
• Also for these who are interested in here is How to install the latest version Telegram for Desktop via CLI which was the reason to searching for the current topic.

Tabby