failed to add spyder 3 to dash (gnome-panel)

Question

i installed spyder3 and tried to add its launcher to the gnome panel. i could not get this to work... i tried several things:

1. i launched spyder3 and clicked on its icon in the panel hoping for an 'Add to Favourites' menu item - there is none.

2. i looked for a .desktop file ($ dpkg -L spyder3 | grep '\.desktop'). it exists and is located at /usr/share/applications/spyder3.desktop. i tried to drag+drop that to the panel. that did not work either.

3. i tried to add spyder3.desktop on the command-line to the settings favourites (something like $ gsettings set org.gnome.shell favorite-apps "['firefox.desktop', ..., 'spyder3.desktop']"). logged out & in again. also that did not work.

4. i tried to create a custom spyder3 launcher using $ gnome-desktop-item-edit. that does create an (executable) .desktop file but i could not add it to the launcher either.

is there a way to add a launcher for spyder3? how?

Answer 1

I see this is an old question, but I hope my answer is helpful anyway. I had the same problem. One way to solve it is to launch the "apps menu" (the little button with nine dots in the lower part of the Gnome menu; also, you can use the "Windows" button). You will find a field with the text "Type to search", where you just have to write "Spyder3". The icon of the app will appear. Just give it a right click, and select "Add to favorites" in the emerging menu. In my case, I installed Spyder3 using pip, so my Spyder .desktop file is located in /usr/local/share/applications. If you don't have it there, you can create one and put it in that folder or in ~/.local/share/applications. Then you can follow the steps above.

One problem I had with this approach is that when I launched Spyder3, another Spyder icon appeared, just besides the one I added, so I had two of them. When I close the application, the second icon disappeared. After experimenting with this behavior, I noticed the icon I added to favorites said "Spyder3", while the other said just "Spyder". If something like this happens to you, you can copy or create a .desktop in /usr/local/share/applications or ~/.local/share/applications with the name "spyder.desktop". If you follow the steps above, you will find the two launchers on the "apps menu". Use the one named "spyder.desktop" and/or remove the one named "spyder3.desktop".

Maybe this is a Spyder bug. I think I'll report it to the authors.

I hope this helps! Feel free to ask again if you have any doubts.