Currently, there is no way to configure watched directories

[lukebemish]

Having used this for a little bit, I've noticed two fairly annoying limitations/issues:

First, even if directories other than ~/Applications are being used to store AppImages instead, that directory gets created each time the service is restarted. This is rather annoying

Second, there's no way to specify which directories should be watched for AppImages. I would like to use a different directory (.opt, for example) to store appimages, but if I do so appimaged won't be able to find them. Some sort of configuration system with a way to specify directories (or exclude them; I don't actually want stuff in Downloads being integrated with my desktop, thank you very much) would solve this. I could look at writing and PRing something, but I'm not sure I am familiar enough with go to do this justice, so I'll see.

[probonopd]

Hi @lukebemish. Thanks for your suggestion, but this works as designed. Configurability is not desired since it increases complexity and decreases reproducability.

[brlin-tw]

Hello, I would like to also request this feature as I use ~/應用軟體 as the folder to put my Appimage and non-Appimage applications, which is the Taiwanese Chinese localized form of ~/Applications.

Please consider extending the xdg-user-dirs infrastructure to locate the actual path of the Applications folder from ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs (e.g. XDG_APPLICATIONS_DIR), this allows localization and user customization to a degree.

Thank you.

Workarounds

It's possible to (kinda) workaround this issue by running the following commands to create a ~/Applications symbolic link to the actual app-containing directory:

ln_opts=(
    # Create a symbolic link instead of a hard link
    --symbolic

    # Specify the last argument is the created link path, not a target directory
    # to create a link to
    --no-target-directory

    # Show what is actually done
    --verbose
)
ln "${ln_opts[@]}" 應用軟體 ~/Applications