What launcher do you use? I know there's a variety, from minimal like dmenu_run to weird powerful stuff like lighthouse.

Recently I found rrun, looks neat though I haven't tried it. Haven't riced in a while.

[rrun]: https://github.com/buster/rrun

I'm using rofi for a while now. https://github.com/DaveDavenport/rofi

It's nice to look at and the windows-switching is also kinda neat, because 90% of my workflow is keyboard/shortcut-focused.

I use the terminal.

(22-03-2017, 12:17 PM)mrtn Wrote: I'm using rofi for a while now. https://github.com/DaveDavenport/rofi

It's nice to look at and the windows-switching is also kinda neat, because 90% of my workflow is keyboard/shortcut-focused.

Same. Rofi is a good alternative to dmenu.

(22-03-2017, 12:23 PM)jkl Wrote: I use the terminal.

Same here. Though I still use "launchers" for specific things, like searching the web. I use "thinglaunch" for that. It displays a black box, you type text in it and that's it. No completion, keybindings or whatever. What is typed here gets outputed to stdout. I use it to search duckduckgo (rather than poping surf, navigate to duckduckgo and then search).

Thinglaunch sounds neat, might give it a shot

Currently I'm using dmenu. It's minimalistic and fits my current setup very well.
Before that I was a rofi user (fullscreen + transparent) but after a while I got tired of it and its color definition within .X{resources,defaults}.

Here's a list of some https://rizonrice.github.io/resources#program-launchers

I personally like synapse for a gtk launcher

Been using rofi for a while, but mostly because of rofi-pass. I've already cobbled together a small script to get a password from pass with fzf. Now I just need a script to open an st-instance or something alike. Then it's back to dmenu, I believe.

interrobang user checking in

I used interrobang for the longest time, the DuckDuckGo bang system is so nice.

This post on reddit made me want to do the same thing:
https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/commen...her_bspwm/

xero Wrote:interrobang user checking in

Idea is cool and DDG bangs are brilliant, but I couldn't get any of them to work last time I tried it. Doesn't look like there's been a commit in over a year either. Might have to have a go rustling something up for myself.

I've been using dmenu, since the main thing I use a launcher for, was to start emacs and occasionally a browser. But recently started using sxhkd for this purpose, so I don't quite need it. May check out rofi though.

Do you use a specific launcher setup? What's the method you use to launch programs?

I have three launching systems:
• Right click menu with pmenu.
• Prompt/runner with xprompt.
• Keybindings with sxhkd.

I still use the terminal and/or - I have become lazier - the desktop‘s default launcher, depending on the OS and the application.

Mostly dmenu, bound to super+x. And I have my most used software launchable via a menu when I click the root window.

Back when I ran wio on wayland, I liked that I could just fire up everything from the terminal, and it would replace the terminal window (just like 9term/rio). To be honest, that's the only reason I tried to switch to wayland 😐

(20-07-2021, 03:03 AM)z3bra Wrote: Back when I ran wio on wayland, I liked that I could just fire up everything from the terminal, and it would replace the terminal window (just like 9term/rio). To be honest, that's the only reason I tried to switch to wayland

A few other X11 window managers have this feature (called window swallowing) available through scripts or plugins. I currently use AwesomeWM, and I use a module that allows me to toggle window swallowing with a keybinding, so this feature isn't rio or wio exclusive.

(22-03-2017, 11:59 AM)greduan Wrote: What launcher do you use? I know there's a variety, from minimal like dmenu_run to weird powerful stuff like lighthouse.

Recently I found rrun, looks neat though I haven't tried it. Haven't riced in a while.

[rrun]: https://github.com/buster/rrun

I dont really run many launchers but I've found some weird one around some old closed thread around 4chan which only can run a custom made os called 'Void Walk OS' I haven't seen it mentioned on any other message boards or any screenshots of it running, I've tried taking the file and running on a virtual machine but the vm just seems to bug out at some type of storage problem; I'm not sure if its something I'm doing or an actual system script which doesn't allow it to run. I might try to run it through the original launcher, I'm new to this website so I dont know if I can continue this threat/reply or whatever but ill try.

(19-07-2021, 10:07 AM)seninha Wrote: I have three launching systems:
• Right click menu with pmenu.
• Prompt/runner with xprompt.
• Keybindings with sxhkd.

Three launching systems?
It's time for me to write yet another X11 application: The One Launcher to rule them all.

Here's the motivation: I have three desktop-control methods. Some launchees (thing to be launched) can be launched by more than one method, while some launchees are launched by a single method. Here's a video.

• To play the next song in the queue, I can press Alt+Space to open XPrompt (a dmenu ripoff) and write "next" to play the next song; or I can right-click on the desktop to open the pie-menu and click on the "next song" icon; or I can press Alt+F12 for sxhkd to run mpc next. Three launching methods for a single launchee.
  
• To play a given song by its name, I need to press Alt+Space to open XPrompt, and write the name of the song. That's the only method to play a song by name.
  
• To run an application (say, the file manager), I can right-click on the desktop and click on the FileManager icon; or I can press Alt+Space to open XPrompt and write "fm" (short for file manager). Two launching methods for a single launchee.
  

Each launching method is configured differently.

There is also another motivation, that I got after trying mlvwm. Mlvwm is a window manager that shows a global menu bar at the top of the screen. The entries in the menu can control the active window by sending keypresses to it. For example, clicking the Edit menu and then Copy sends Ctrl+C to the active window.

So I had this idea: a global desktop controller (launcher) and window controller.

It's basically a bar/panel à la macOS. Most entries on the global menu change as the active window changes, while some entries are constant between windows (such as the entry to change the song or run an application).

• Some menu entries have an accelerator/keybinding. Pressing it, launches the given entry. This eliminates the dependency on sxhkd.
  
• The global menu thing can be turned into a xprompt/dmenu widget listing all the menu entries. While you type the entries are filtered (just like in dmenu/xprompt). This eliminates the dependency on xprompt.
  
• Some entries can be selected to build a desktop context menu. This eliminates the dependency on pmenu.
  

I just began to write this global menu thing.
Let's see how it goes.

That's it.
Just needed to share this idea I had.

(22-03-2017, 12:23 PM)jkl Wrote: I use the terminal.

Yeah, I was going to say "st" is my launcher. Although I do also use dmenu. I haven't bothered with any other launchers beause i have no need for it.

I use emacs as dmenu for some frecency sort of stuff that I get. But at one point I was really annoyed with the delay on some dynamic stuff, and chased rofi for that reason (you can interact before stdin finishes there). I wrote about it at the time: https://notes.neeasade.net/tickling-bash...nture.html

I've recently discovered this rofr.sh script, which makes rofi's cli much more flexible and easier to use imho.

As for searching web, I use this `ssurf' script to launch a surf session with 'sane' defaults:


And I created this script to quickly look up things on different search browsers:

I'm mostly using dmenu (while on X) or bemenu (same thing, but on Wayland) which I had bound to Alt+d since for the most part I'm running graphical stuff, although I always have a terminal open at all times and it's always visible

I redid my launcher system.
Now the menu, prompt, and keybindings are handled by a single program, xmenu.
I have posted it on my blog here with a video illustrating the usage.

I use both rofi and dmenu. Rofi for launching apps and a powermenu, both derived from this repo; dmenu as my clipboard manager and a small shell script called passmenu that allows you to easily copy passwords from pass

I rewrote the menu system I use for application launching (and several other stuff) from scratch.
It's called ctrlmenu

It now has a better config syntax and I can open applications, look for man pages, play songs, etc. Everything from a unified menu input system composed of a runner/prompt, pop up menus, and keybindings.