How to Fix Linux Menu Icons for Portable Electron Apps You downloaded a Linux app as a portable folder or a raw binary — Antigravity IDE, a portable VS Code, a side-loaded Electron tool. You wrote a .desktop file, dropped it in ~/.local/share/applications/ , and the app is gone from the menu. The launcher grid shows nothing.
Key Takeaways
A path like /home/ubuntu/Downloads/Antigravity IDE/resources/app/resources/linux/code.png will silently fail to load for two reasons: the unquoted space inside Icon= breaks the parser, and even when the parser survives, the desktop file validator (which runs when update-desktop-database regenerates the cache) treats the entry as malformed and drops it.
Step 1: Move the icon into a system folder with a clean path Putting the icon in a folder that has a space in its name (such as /Downloads/Antigravity IDE/ ) is the most common way to get the loader to fail.
Open the file in your editor of choice: nano ~/.local/share/applications/antigravity-ide.desktop Paste the following configuration: [Desktop Entry] Name=Antigravity IDE Comment=Antigravity IDE Launcher Exec="/home/ubuntu/Downloads/Antigravity IDE/antigravity-ide" --no-sandbox Icon=/home/ubuntu/.local/share/icons/antigravity-ide.png Type=Application Categories=Development;IDE; Terminal=false > Important: Wrap the Exec= path in double quotes ( "..." ) if it contains spaces.
Bottom Line
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