Cannot add Location items to menu

[Michael von Glasow]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Right-click Applications (behavior with Menu may be the same)
2. Click “Edit Menus”.
3. Select a menu, and click “New Item”.
4. Select “Location” for the type.
5. Enter a name.
6. For the location, do one of the following:
   a. Enter a path.
   b. Enter a URL.
   c. Click “Browse” and choose a file.
7. Click “OK”.

Expected result:

I would expect the new item to show in the list, and appear in the menu.

Actual result:

Nothing appears in the list or in the Applications menu—as if I had clicked “Cancel” instead of “OK”. However, ~/.share/applications has a new file, mozo-made-##.desktop (in Caja it appears with the user-specified name rather than the filename). File content is as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Link
Icon=mate-panel-launcher
Icon[en]=mate-panel-launcher
Name[en]=Home Folder
URL=~
Comment[en]=Open your personal folder
Name=Home Folder
Comment=Open your personal folder

So the file gets created but apparently not picked up by the menu.

Software configuration:

Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS, upgraded from 16.04 today.

Other comments:

There does not seem to be a way to pick a folder for the location (only files work), which might be a separate bug.

I would like to move away from the three-item (Applications/Places/System) menu to the single-menu layout (main incentives being the search box, and that the single menu can be brought up by pressing the hitherto unused Windows key). The one thing that is keeping me from it is the lack of an equivalent for the Places menu—this would have been my workaround.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.