Add top category to Menu bar

I have been using Ubuntu Mate (now 20.4) for some time now and I am very satisfied with it. I have been trying to find an answer to the question of how to add another menu category (eg. Games) to the Mate menu bar in addition to the standard basic categories (Applications, Places, System). I understand that using the Menu editor, subcategories can be added (for example, to the Applications category), but I did not find an adequate answer how to add the root / top category. I also tried to find the answer at Freedesktop tutorials (https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/) and it is clear to me that this should be done by editing several configuration files, but a clear answer is eluding me for now.
Any help would be appreciated.

Hello @puchonge, welcome to the forum. :handshake: :mate: :ubuntu_mate:

You happened to encounter a programmer who has read over and contributed to the source code of the MATE Panel. I can tell you that, the way the MATE Panel is implemented now, there is no way that I currently know of to add such a fourth menu to the Main Menu. (The FreeDesktop.org menu standards refer to other desktop environments; MATE does not have such a capability yet.)

However, if you really want this feature, I might be able to give you a "patch" to the source code which, when compiled along with the MATE Panel, adds this extra configurability to the MATE Panel. Eventually it may become an official feature of the MATE Panel, like many of my contributions thus far have become. However, it will take me hours and maybe even days to implement the feature, and you will have to recompile the MATE Panel with my patch (I outlined the full procedure here: How to modify and rebuild a package for Ubuntu MATE (or Ubuntu, or Debian)). I'm not sure whether you're willing to wait and then put in the effort to get this feature though, so until you say yes, I shall not start on this feature.

Let me know if you're willing or not to go through these hoops.

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Thank you very much Gordon! I have always read that the Ubuntu Mate community is very welcoming, but I have to admit that I didn’t quite expect to receive such detailed answer, from contributor himself, and as soon as in few minutes :blush:

Thank you for your suggestion of a source code patch, but that solution is a bit too complex for me at the moment.

The thing is that I have seen once on some forum screenshot that one user had added fourth category to the menu (I have tried to find the link now, but didn’t succeeded), so I thought that it shouldn’t be too complicated.

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Maybe I'm missing something here, but why not just add the "Games" root node via the usual "Copy a launcher..." process? Available already, and much less time-consuming or complicated.

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arQon thank you for your suggestion, I wasn't aware of the possibility. If I am understanding it correctly, it is possible to add either existing launcher or even entire submenu to the panel, which is close to my initial idea.

When I add the submenu, it is represented as icon on the panel, and when I click, it shows the appropriate items in the submenu. Do you know is it possible:

  1. to change icon representation of the submenu on the panel with name of the submenu (only name, without the icon)?
  2. to have second submenu in the existing one, because as far as I can see, when I add menu to the panel, it adds only the last tier of the submenu from the Application category.

I hope that I haven't complicated it too much. Thanks for the suggestions.

#1 Not AFAIK, but I've never tried. My guess is "not", sorry, but maybe someone else knows better.

#2 Not entirely sure I understand you...
Admittedly, the flow / discoverability for this is not great: if you want something from within a group, you need to expand the group first via the microscopic triangle next to it, rather than double-clicking it the way everything else works. If you want the group itself though (which is what I thought you were after) you should be able to add that easily.