I have a folder in my Dropbox and I want to add a shortcut of that folder on my Desktop. I guess this should be extremely easy as in Windows OS :) However, I have no idea how to do it in Ubuntu 14.04.
Is there anything I can do to create a simple folder shortcut on my desktop?
Click on that folder, click on make link, then move the shortcut to Desktop.
You can read full details here
man ln
ln -s /usr/bin/bar /opt/foo
also see this link Create a soft or symbolic link
I wasn't able to file a reliable solution from the other provided answers. As such, I'm sharing my preferred approach to creating a desktop shortcut.
Desktop shortcuts can be added by creating a file with the .desktop extension in the ~/Desktop/ folder using any text editor. The .desktop file we create shall launch the folder viewer app xdg-open at the location specified by [folder-path].
Though it's not necessary, it is of course sensible to name the file similarly to the folder name.
The following information should be written to ~/Desktop/[file-name].desktop:
[Desktop Entry]
Name=[folder-name]
Exec=xdg-open [folder-path]
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Icon=[icon-path]
Replacing [folder-name] with the name of the folder and [folder-path] with the location of the folder.
Please Note: If the location or name of the folder changes then the .desktop entry will require to be edited.
Once the file has been created it shall appear on the desktop. Right click it and click Allow Launching to activate the .desktop file as an application.
You can replace [icon-path] with an image of your choice; Default Ubuntu icons are located at: /usr/share/icons/.
Examples of default Ubuntu folder icons include (but are not limited to):
/usr/share/icons/Yaru/48x48/places/folder.png/usr/share/icons/Humanity/places/48/folder.svg/usr/share/icons/HighContrast/48x48/folder.pngFor more information on the Desktop Entry Specification please see: https://developer.gnome.org/desktop-entry-spec/
Note that as our file is launching xdg-open it is proper to use the .desktop extension, rather than the .directory extension.
Apparently this is handled correctly from the GUI :-) (14.04 LTS)
(Move to Trash, Empty Trash)
But generally: When you have a link to a directory, be VERY sure to delete ONLY the link should/when you come to that point.
From terminal, the correct thing to do is:
rm LINK-TO-DIR
BUT NOT:
rm -r LINK-TO-DIR
... which will first delete the files/dirs that the link MAKES VISIBLE,
and even more so with the "-f" flag.
If you are a "Terminal" user, have a look on the output of
ln --help
... that ls lover case of LN nothing else ;-)
The syntax for it may seem a tad "backwards" at first as you FIRST specify where it should point, then the name of your LINK.
cd $HOME/Desktop mkdir -p $HOME/z ln -s $HOME/z New-Link-To-Home-z
... note that the GUI will not notice the new Desktop content without help; you need to logout+login.
More info on the 'net or slightly terse in either of
man ln info ln
... where I personally prefer the first because 'info' has a tendency to 'slip out of context'.
Basically there are two options and both of them work with Ubuntu 22.04 and probably previous releases too,
You can create a link to your Dropbox folder by running this command in terminal
ln -s <path_to_reference_folder> <path_where_you_want_your_link_to_be_placed>
You can also do it through pressing Ctrl+Shift+M after selecting the folder you want a shortcut of, it will create a link to that folder in the reference folder's parent folder, then you can press Ctrl+Shift and drag the link_to_your_folder to desktop or wherever you want that to be placed.
Note: Just doing Ctrl+Shift and drag, as some people suggested here, won't create a shortcut of your folder instead it would move your folder to desktop which you probably don't want to do as this isn't the way shortcuts work in Windows.
Have a Nice Day...!
Sorry I'm so late to the conversation but if you are trying to navigate to a folder or run any common command with ease you want to create aliases. First you need to open the alias editor.
sudo nano -Bu ~/.bashrc
go all the way to the bottom of the opened document and add the following
#My aliases
alias aliasname='command you want issued here'
in my editor I added these 2 lines to make it easier to access and edit my aliases.
alias makealias='sudo nano -Bu ~/.bashrc'
alias refreshalias='. ~/.bashrc'
after your aliases have been created issue the refreshalias command I made
. ~/.bashrc
now test your alias by entering your keyword and see if it creates correctly.
Something that surprised me the first time I did this was the fact that 3 common file directory tools taught to me in school ll, la, and l were all aliases of ls extentions in this same tool.
alias ll='ls -alF'
alias la='ls -A'
alias l='ls -CF'
as a note to me I also created an aliaslist.txt file on my home with every alias I made with a description after it. Have fun building aliases hope they help you as much as they help me.
This works for me -r option to make the shortcut relative to its source. Without it, you may have error as
The link "shortcut-name" is broken
ln -rs /path/to/create/shortcut-name /path/to/the/source
These below command will create file or folder shortcut in your working directory, in this case it's Desktop/.
cd Desktop/
ln -s /path/to/source/file-or-folder
