How install signal appimage

Ask Fedora
1

I’m using fedora 44 workstation

I downloaded the signal appimage from the official signal site,

it works, but it is not installed,

and it does not appear in the installed menu.

How can i fix this,

so that it can also be updated regularly?

2

What do you mean by this?

create a .desktop file:

touch ~/.local/share/applications/signal-appimage.desktop

Add the following content. Make sure to replace the Exec path with the path to your AppImage. Make sure there is no blank line at the beginning of the file.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Signal AppImage
Exec=/home/your-username/Downloads/signal-desktop.AppImage %U
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=signal-desktop
StartupWMClass=signal
MimeType=x-scheme-handler/sgnl;x-scheme-handler/signalcaptcha;
Categories=Network;InstantMessaging;Chat;
3

That does not take care of updates.
For someone who’s uneasy about download vs install, flatpak seems to be a better fit. At least a flatpak update will update all flatpaks in one go. (Maybe Gnome software does that automatically?)

4

the flatpak app is not an official signal app

5

Signal says:

The AppImage auto updates which can be configured in settings.
For more info and optional setup please visit the Signal Support site:
https://support.signal.org/hc/articles/360008216551-Installing-Signal

I don’t think that auto-update mechanism would be dependent on whether Signal appears in your app launcher menu.

6

For appimages I use Gear Lever as it will fetch updates for you and mount to your launcher.

7

If you want to stay with the official AppImage, I would treat the launcher and the update mechanism as separate things. The .desktop file only makes it appear in the menu; the AppImage still updates itself from inside Signal, so it will not be managed by dnf/GNOME Software like an rpm. If you want a nicer desktop integration step, tools like Gear Lever can create the menu entry for AppImages, but I would still download Signal itself only from signal.org and keep auto-update enabled in Signal’s preferences.

8

You can use AppImage launcher to integrate the AppImage onto your system:

sudo dnf install https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppImageLauncher/releases/download/v3.0.0-beta-3/appimagelauncher_3.0.0-beta-2-gha287.96cb937_x86_64.rpm
9

please,

explain what “to integrate the AppImage onto your system:”

means,

I’m not tech savvy

10

What AppImage Launcher does when it “Integrates” the AppImage onto your system:
Extracts the .desktop file, if there is one.
Extracts the executables.
and other files and at put those files to their corresponding paths.

11

I’m bad at explaining, but I did good this time?