Installing Postman on Ubuntu — the right way

Any web developer who has ever worked on creating APIs for more than a few months would probably have used Postman already — be it to test their API, create API documentation, debug their API, and more.

While downloading Postman from https://www.getpostman.com/postman is straightforward, it is the installation which is a hassle if you want to save your time to start it up every time you want to use it.

You get a gzip-compressed tarball(a .tar.gz file) on downloading Postman with a filename like “Postman-linux-x64–6.6.1.tar.gz”.

You can then extract the tarball using tar -xvzf Postman-linux-x64-6.6.1.tar.gz and run Postman by cding into the extracted folder and then running Postman executable as follows:

$ tar -xvzf Postman-linux-x64-6.6.1.tar.gz
$ cd Postman
$ ./Postman

This will start up Postman for you but the downside is that you have to run Postman from command line everytime you want to use it. Also, a terminal window needs to be open for the duration of the usage which is completely unnecessary.

The solution is to have Postman show up in Ubuntu Dash so that you can start it up easily

Here’s how you can achieve this:

1. Download a logo, into a directory of your choice, to show up in Dash for Postman.
2. Create postman.desktop file in ~/.local/share/applications/:

$ vim ~/.local/share/applications/postman.desktop

3. Add the following contents in the file:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Postman
Comment=Postman Desktop
Exec=/home/<your-username>/<path-to-postman-executable>
Path=/home/<your-username>/<path-to-postman-executable-directory>
Icon=/home/<your-username>/<path-to-postman-logo>
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Development;

4. Save the file.

5. Verify that the contents of your postman.desktop file are fine by running:

$ desktop-file-validate postman.desktop

6. If you don’t get any errors, then the contents of your postman.desktop file are good to go and you should be able to see Postman icon in your dash.

7. If you are unable to see the icon, please run the following:

$ sudo update-desktop-database

8. In the rare case that you are still unable to see the icon, please log out and log back into your system.

I felt the need to write this blog because I had to hop through various resources to get this working. I don’t want myself or any fellow developer to go through the same pain again. If you found it informative, follow me on Twitter and Medium to get notified whenever I blog.