Google Chrome 85, which I use as a secondary browser, introduced a regresion for AMD GPUs and I have to provide it a command line option in order to mitigate the problem. I was trying to find if there is any way to override or redefine just the Exec line of the desktop entry (app.desktop file) but it looks like it can’t be done.

The solution is to copy desktop entry specification from /usr/share/applications to home folder. Do not change the file name if you want to override the system-wide specification, do change the file name when you want to have a copy (another icon/app). In my case, I do only want a single Google Chrome entry:

cp /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop ~/.local/share/applications

I’ve edited the file putting the required “use-cmd-decoder” GPU workaround. Note the new desktop action called “New Insecure Windows” which starts new session in insecure mode when server certificate errors are ignored. I only use this to access test machines signed with self-signed CA certificates, do not use this for real web!

$ cat ~/.local/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Google Chrome
GenericName=Web Browser
GenericName[cs]=WWW prohlížeč
Comment=Access the Internet
Comment[cs]=Přístup k internetu
# https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1122224
Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable %U --auth-server-whitelist="*redhat.com" --use-cmd-decoder=validating
StartupNotify=true
Terminal=false
Icon=google-chrome
Type=Application
Categories=Network;WebBrowser;
MimeType=application/pdf;application/rdf+xml;application/rss+xml;application/xhtml+xml;application/xhtml_xml;application/xml;image/gif;image/jpeg;image/png;image/webp;text/html;text/xml;x-scheme-handler/ftp;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;
Actions=new-window;new-private-window;new-insecure-window;

[Desktop Action new-window]
Name=New Window
Name[cs]=Nové okno
Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable

[Desktop Action new-private-window]
Name=New Incognito Window
Name[cs]=Nové anonymní okno
Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --incognito

[Desktop Action new-insecure-window]
Name=New Insecure Window
Name[cs]=Nové nezabezečené okno
Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --incognito --allow-running-insecure-content --ignore-certificate-errors

No need of restarting, Gnome automatically picks the changes which is cool. That’s all I have for today.