Desktop icon position (programmatically access and manipulate)

salon_sue

I'd like to programmatically access and manipulate the Desktop icon positions, their icons, etc. This is for files and directories that you keep in ~/Desktop . Where is this stuff stored?

Originally asked by David on Stack Exchange (askubuntu) (CC BY-SA 3.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

Stored as GVFS metadata attributes. To get all GVFS metadata attributes for file/directory: gvfs-info '/home/user/Desktop/Untitled Folder/' To get specific attribute - icon position: gvfs-info -a 'metadata::nautilus-icon-position' '/home/user/Desktop/Untitled Document/' To set icon position: gvfs-set-attribute -t string '/home/user/Desktop/Untitled Document/' 'metadata::nautilus-icon-position' '500,500' Remember to refresh desktop (F5 key) to see effect. If lower level manipulation required there is Nautilus Extension API (via libnautilus): https://developer.gnome.org/libnautilus-extension/stable/ and specifically:...

Full answer by dess: https://askubuntu.stackexchange.com/a/573359 (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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