Drag and drop from GNOME activities menu to desktop?

So I recently got Ubuntu GNOME going on my laptop. I love it! However I have one complaint:

I can't easily add programs to my desktop.

Is there a way that I can just drag and drop an icon from the "Activities" menu straight to the desktop? Or a way I can just choose my app(s) from a list and cilck "Make me a desktop icon for this"?

I know I could manually make and edit the shortcuts with .desktop files, but that's such a pain -_-

you could go to /usr/share/applications/ or ~/.local/share/applications with nautilus and copy/link those to the desktop. Also make sure to open gnome-tweak-tool and under the "Desktop" section enable it to behave as a folder to be able to see your ~/Desktop/ icons