Desktop Integration (Export)

Put container apps on your host — desktop entries with icons in your launcher, and container tools on your PATH as small shell shims.

Commands

Command	Description
`podbox export app <name>`	Export a `.desktop` application
`podbox export bin <name>`	Create a binary shim in `~/.local/bin`

Applications and binaries are declared in the config under [integration.export]:

toml

[integration.export]
apps = ["gedit", "nautilus"]
bins = ["rg", "gcc"]

App Export

podbox export app extracts a desktop application from the container and makes it launchable from the host.

INFO

The container must be running to export an app — podbox export app uses podman exec to read the .desktop file from inside the container. Start the container first if it is stopped.

How it works

Reads /usr/share/applications/<name>.desktop from the running container.
Rewrites Exec= to route through podbox (everything else preserved): ini Exec=gedit %F becomes: Exec=podbox --container "myenv" exec -- gedit %F
Copies the first matching icon to ~/.local/share/icons/podbox/<container>/<name>.<ext>.
Writes ~/.local/share/applications/podbox-<container>-<name>.desktop.
Runs update-desktop-database (a failure only warns).

Icon search paths

bash

/usr/share/icons/hicolor/{48,64,128,256}x{48,64,128,256}/apps/<name>.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/<name>.svg

MIME types

MimeType= lines carry over unchanged — your desktop registers the container app as a handler, and opening such a file dispatches through the rewritten Exec=. No extra setup.

Binary Export

podbox export bin creates a shell shim so a container binary appears on the host PATH.

Generated shim

A script is written to ~/.local/bin/<name>:

#!/bin/sh
exec podbox --container "<name>" run "<bin>" "$@"

The --container flag pins the target regardless of active context. If ~/.local/bin is on your PATH (most distros do this), the binary just works.

Cleanup

bash

podbox export clean

Removes the container's .desktop files, its icon dir, and any ~/.local/bin shims referencing it.

WARNING

podbox remove doesn't unexport. Clean up before removing the container.