I had to take new screenshots for our list of the best GTK themes this weekend and in doing become acutely aware of how much the “Snap” folder in its current form bugs me.
Petty, I know.
You don’t need a magnifying glass or a particularly pedantic persuasion to understand why the directory irks me. A quick glance at the hero image in this post should be all you need to see what’s wrong.
Perhaps you’ve even noticed it yourself.
Coming up blank? Well, Ubuntu badges each of the default folders in the Home directory (e.g., Downloads, Music, Videos etc) with a symbolic icon to denote the content type apart from two: Desktop (which is shaped like a desktop, so it gets a pass), and the (also annoyingly lowercase) ~/snap folder.
Wouldn’t adding the Snapcraft logo to the Snap folder round off an otherwise punctured aesthetic?
Presumably there are reasons why the snap folder is blank (and lowercase, a separate gripe).
The the lack of glorified glyph might be because the ~/snap folder isn’t a folder in a traditional sense. I mean, it is a folder but it’s not somewhere ‘we’re’ supposed to poke around in, add things ad hoc, on a whim, etc.
But on the flip side: if the Snap directory isn’t a regular folder …why does it use a regular folder icon?
Doesn’t the use of an inconsequential, unremarkable, and unbadged icon scream “there is nothing special about this folder” to users who might a) be unsure of why it’s there and b) wondering if it’s okay to delete it?
Questions, questions…
The issue tracker for the Yaru icon theme doesn’t have an issue to track this, and a fairly well-worded search on the Snapcraft discourse came up as blank as the folder that bugs me 😝!
Assuming you’re happy with the ~/snap folder being included in the first place I’d love to know what your preference is. Would you like the folder to be emblem-sized? Are you happy with it as is? Should it be capitalised?
Let me know in the comments!