Looking for a good app launcher for Linux. Currently looking for something for Arch and I see there’s a lot of options liks rofi and wofi. What are your favourite app launchers and why?

  • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
    341·
    6 days ago

    Arch is just a distro. What DE or Window manager are you on, Wayland or still XOrg?

    rofi and wofi are a good example how this question makes no sense.

    • gwilikers@lemmy.mlOP
      81·
      6 days ago

      You’re right I sbould have included that in the question. I’m on Hyprland with Wayland so there are quite a few choices. I mentioned rofi (rofi-wayland) and wofi because I can see that they are both options here.

  • narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee
    311·
    6 days ago

    I just use whatever is included with the desktop environment. On KDE and GNOME launching an application involves pressing the Super (“Windows”) key, typing the first couple of letters of the application I want to launch and pressing the return key.

    I might be missing something here but I don’t know how other launchers could possibly make this a simpler process.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
      5·
      6 days ago

      I might be missing something here but I don’t know how other launchers could possibly make this a simpler process.

      Shortcuts to launch an app directly in example. So my keyboard becomes my launcher.

      I use bunch of different tools, including KRunner (on KDE) and previously Rofi. These type name and search tools for launching an app have the problem that you need to remember what name the tool was. For programs I use often this is not an issue, but not all applications have names good to remember and not all of them are used often. The associated description helps, but sometimes I don’t know what words to type.

      Therefore I “need” the app menu with categories and favorites, to navigate with the mouse through. And the most used applications are usually assigned to a shortcut and my panel on the top. In short I use mostly all of these techniques as an application launcher (in that order):

      1. favorites on panel and my keyboard shortcuts
      2. app menu with categories, navigating with mouse
      3. run tool to search for app name and description (also integrated into the app menu)
      4. additional helper scripts to search and launch programs in the terminal

      Edit: Forgot to mention that some of the launchers I use are custom made scripts for the terminal.

  • itsbledley@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    5 days ago

    Very comfortable with Rofi. It’s especially nice in a window manager as it also works as a switcher or shortcut to your open programs.

  • cakeistheanswer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    5·
    6 days ago

    I like fuzzel, had a few issues with dpi scaling on wofi out of the box.

    Easy to integrate clipboard/window select/dmenu binds and a way to distinguish indexed entries from straight text was a plus.

    Honestly unless you’re going out of the box to something new (Walker and anyrun caught my eye) dmenu has had everything I needed for years… But I don’t want to set it up again. Not again.

  • hushable@lemmy.world
    4·
    6 days ago

    I’ve been using ULauncher for a while and I’m quite happy with it, it has plugin support too.

    • Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip
      1·
      5 days ago

      Unfortunately not actively maintained and the project got stuck in a decision process from the dev for plugin contribution process.

      Fortunately still works. A similar project from a contributor there is walker. Very early in development but is way more promising.

  • chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world
    410·
    6 days ago

    So you’re using Hyprland WM… I’m assuming to have a minimalistic Window Manager… But you want an app launcher.

    No offense, but FFS just use a DE at that point. You’re just creating a DE with extra steps. KDE is nice and fairly lightweight.

    • red@lemmy.zipEnglish
      7·
      6 days ago

      makes no sense, app launcher+ window manager is still wayy more minimalistic than de

    • jmf@lemm.ee
      21·
      6 days ago

      Plasma has such a good tiling window manager now as well, with one of the most low resource draw frameworks powering it. But it isn’t cool and hip I guess!

      • red@lemmy.zipEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        how did you get tiling working in plasma? bismuth broke after plasma 6 the other ones are also really bad

        • jmf@lemm.ee
          21·
          6 days ago

          Tiling is built into plasma after late versions of 5. You can hit super+T to change default layout, shift+drag window to snap to layout, and set custom keybinds for keybord navigation. There might be default settings but I set mine to mimic i3 of the bat so I couldnt tell you what they are…

    • kelvie@lemmy.ca
      4·
      6 days ago

      I also use krunner but unless I’ve misconfigured it, I wouldn’t call it fast (and it freezes a lot since it runs in the background).

      Compared to when I used rofi on hyprland (which was really fast). I’m back on KDE cause of the hyprland toxicity debacle, and honesty the only thing that isn’t fast, customizable, and reliable is the app runner.

      Krunner also has a weird quirk where as it loads entries, it will change the currently selected option so when you hit Enter, it will actually not execute the one you want, but instead run “Install <random package from fuzzy search>”

      Talking out loud I should probably bind alt+space to back to rofi or try Fuzzel or something