Ade Malsasa Akbar contact
Senior author, Open Source enthusiast.
Monday, January 11, 2016 at 19:48

Alacarte is the easiest tool to edit Ubuntu menu entries. It allows you to show, create a new entry of application, edit the existing entries, change the icon images, or delete any. It is very useful to create Unity Dash menu entry for any application software installed manually. Alacarte is also an alternative to MenuLibre. Here the instructions about how to use it.

Install Alacarte


sudo apt-get install alacarte

Create A Menu Entry


Suppose you have installed manually an application like Mobile Media Converter. Of course it has no menu entry in Ubuntu Dash. Here you can create it yourself. To create a menu entry:


  1. Open Alacarte. It is named "Main Menu" in the Unity Dash.
  2. Enter one category, for example Sound & Video.
  3. Click New Item.
  4. Type the name of the program, for example My File Manager. 
  5. Type the path of the program, for example /usr/bin/nautilus.
  6. Change the icon by clicking on the top-left button. You can access hundreds of icons available at /usr/share/icons directory.
  7. Press OK.
  8. Close Alacarte. You should close Alacarte to see changes.
  9. Search your entry in the Ubuntu menu.