HOWTO: Fix the broken “Open Terminal Here” menu icon in XFCE

Monday, September 23rd, 2013 at 5:37 pm | 8,388 views | trackback url

Xfce logo
If you’re using XFCE, specifically version 4, you’ve probably seen this issue come up a few times. It looks like this:

Xfce4 missing icons

The fix is pretty simple and straightforward. Here’s how:

  1. Go up to your “Applications Menu” and choose “File Manager”. This will launch your configured, default file manager (most-likely Thunar, unless you’ve changed something).

    Launch Xfce4 file manager

  2. Choose “Configure Custom Actions” from the “Edit” menu, as shown here:

    Configure custom actions in Xfce4

  3. Now select the “Open Terminal Here” option, and click the “Edit” button (looks like a little pencil and paper)

    Edit open terminal here in Xfce4

  4. Now you’ll see a screen where you can change/edit your custom action’s metadata, including its display icon. Click the broken icon image to change it to something reasonable.

    Change custom action icon in Xfce4

  5. Once you choose an icon, click “Ok” to save it. I chose something that looked like a terminal session icon. You can choose whatever you wish that fits your needs. Once you save it, you’ll see it show up in the metadata screen like this:

    Change custom action icon in Xfce4

  6. Now you can click “Ok”, and “Close” on the previous dialog box to save the changes you’ve made.

    But wait! The icon hasn’t changed yet! You’re probably still seeing a broken icon on the menu. There’s one more thing you need to do…

  7. To refresh those cached-in-memory icons, you have to either log out and back in, or.. kill the desktop. I prefer the latter, so simply open a terminal, and run the following command:
    $ killall xfdesktop

    That’s it. Now if you right-click, you’ll see your shiny new icon show up on the menu, no more broken icon!

    Fixed missing icon in Xfce4

Hopefully that helps!

Last Modified: Sunday, March 6th, 2016 @ 04:35

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