Launch Appimages using rofi

I’m using rofi as application launcher on my linux desktop systems and since I’m using AppImages as well I also wanted to know how I can easily launch them via rofi. I always thought that I had to extend rofi’s search path, but I haven’t found a solution yet. Today I found out that .desktop files per application integrate them into the menu. Thank you til.scapegoat.dev for your article about it! I knew that .desktop files existed, but I have never used them myself. Now I know these are to create shortcut icons on desktops, or to create system menu entries and submenus.

So to integrate an AppImage into rofi we have to create a .desktop file for each application in

~/.local/share/applications/

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=App Name
Exec=/path/to/your/<NAME>.AppImage
Terminal=false

Then update the desktop database with:

update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications

In my case it was enough to just have the new .desktop files in 0600 permissions (read-write for only me), but keep in mind that they actually have to be executable.