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How to delay a program such as cairo-dock (No openGL) or Firefox?

Sometimes programs crash when started with other startup apps. I want programs to start 10 seconds late to avoid a crash.

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6 Answers 6

Reset to default
59

Delaying autostart with inbuilt delay option

Note: Only works with desktop sessions that recognize the X-GNOME-Autostart-Delayparameter (e.g. Unity, Unity2D, GNOME). This will not work for LXDE, XFCE, KDE, etc.

With this solution there's no need for a script or sleep. Head to your autostart folder:

nautilus ~/.config/autostart

Find the .desktop file that corresponds with your application and open it in a text editor, e.g. gedit:

gedit ~/.config/autostart/application.desktop

Append the following line to the file:

X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=foo

where foo is the time in seconds you want to delay the application launch by, e.g.:

X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=60

Save the file, relog and you should see the effects.

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  • This works very well in both ubuntu 12.04 and in 12.10-development release using Gnome-shell 3.6
    – bmbaker
    Oct 7, 2012 at 18:01
  • 2
    Works in Ubuntu 18.04.
    – Ives
    Jul 3, 2018 at 13:50
  • 1
    Is there a website or man page to find documentation for GNOME parameters? I searched in gnome-session man page but could not find them.
    – builder-7000
    May 25, 2020 at 17:15
26

Try this: 

bash -c "sleep 10 && firefox"
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  • 4
    10x a lot, why does just sleep 10 && firefox not work?
    – user3804598
    Jan 2, 2018 at 20:43
6

You could try to change the command to this:

sleep 10 && firefox

Some people say it works, some say it doesn't, if this is your case, and it does not work, you can try with:

xterm -e 'sleep 10 && firefox'
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5

I had to use this to get it to work for skype: sh -c "sleep 10 && skype &" in Ubuntu 12.04

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Make a startup command using https://askubuntu.com/a/48327/139749 . Then you can add delay by opening ~/.config/autostart and edit related file. You should add the following commands:

X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=10
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  • you're repeating the first answer.
    – maxadamo
    Dec 31, 2019 at 11:24
1

Solution by @Noraj works well for Ubuntu 18.04. Adding a couple of practical examples for Google Drive sync via Insync, and Synology cloud-drive. I don't want them to delay the startup.

For google-drive:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=Insync
GenericName=Insync
Comment=Launch Insync
Icon=insync
Categories=Network;
Exec=insync start
TryExec=insync
Terminal=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=60

And for cloud-drive:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Synology Drive Client
Comment=Synology Drive Client
Exec=synology-drive autostart
Icon=/opt/Synology/SynologyDrive/images/ico_72_cloud_station.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Network;FileTransfer;
X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=75

Both files locate at $HOME/.config/autostart if you installed the applications and chose to make them start at login.

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