1 yr. ago • 75%

How do i add steam games to my Gnome desktop?

Using the add game to desktop shortcut dosen't work and only adds a broken badge and dosen't really add it to the system, plz help!! NEW TO LINUX!!!

26 comments

GNOME doesn't really care about shortcuts on the actual desktop, but you could put those gamename.desktop shortcuts Steam created into ~/.local/share/applications instead, and then they will appear alongside your Applications in GNOME.

~ represents your home directory, basically an alias for /home/username/ so you wouldn't have to type that in a terminal all the time. .local/ is a hidden folder (that's what the dot at the start does) and you might need to check if your file browser is showing hidden files and folders to see it.

To get more in-depth help in the future, you should probably state what Linux distro (Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch...) you are using too, different distros can have different ways of doing things!

9
I don't know but you can just hit the windows key and start typing the name of the game. :)

Gnome doesn't really encourage the use of icons on desktops...it's an old way of starting programs and not really needed.

6
- Dosent even show up even when doing that aswell plz help
  
  1
  
  How did you install steam?
  
  3
  
  Can't help you, all Linux are different so depends on your Linux distribution and what you did to install it. :)
  
  -7
Don’t know if it’s the answer you are looking for but if when you install the game you click add application menu shortcut it will add it to the menu that opens with windows key. I have never personally used desktop shortcuts on gnome since it isn’t included stock.

2
- A few of my games show up but not all of them it's weird so weird
  
  1
@Simplesyrup
Gnome by default does not allow this. You need a gnome extension like this https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1465/desktop-icons/ to do so.

2
- This, or the Tray Icons: Reloaded extension for GNOME, which adds the Steam icon to the tray bar. From there, you can click it and it shows a list of the installed games.
  
  If you are new to Linux, GNOME has quite a different feel from your usual Windows flow. I personally love it and would never swap back.
  
  (Off-topic, but If you would be interested in a gaming-oriented distro, I would recommend Nobara Linux - the official version looks fairly familiar for Windows users and it also comes with a bunch of gaming-related stuff preinstalled like Steam, wine dependencies, mesa drivers for AMD, etc)
  
  1
@Simplesyrup Steam client?

1
- @Simplesyrup Hmmm, it appears Lemmy doesn't pull images from Mastodon, there's meant to be a screenshot there...
  
  3
  
  @solarisfire @Simplesyrup
  I see the screenshot from the Mastodon mobile web client.
  
  Edit: of course I do. It's the other way around that doesn't seem to work.
  
  1
- Yes i do that and it dsoent add it to my system, only a broken desktop icon and that's it :(
  
  1
  
  You did right click and select 'allow launching' on the greyed out short cut icon?
  
  1
Did this get sorted?

1
- Nope just learned to cope with the issue like many things
  
  2
  
  I just tested on mine:
  
  Right click game in steam, add shortcut to desktop double-click shortcut, game runs.
  
  I checked the shortcut to see what the command is (right-click, properties):
  
  steam steam://rungameid/648800
  
  Is that what you have? The only thing I can think of is that steam isn't in your path, ie when you double click the shortcut it tries to run 'steam' but then can't find it.
  
  If you open a terminal and type:
  
  which steam
  
  what's your output? You should have something like /usr/bin/steam
  
  2

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