Application launcher for Wayland systems.

[leyvi]

Anyone know of a good launcher for Wayland systems that can read the .desktop entries in the /usr directory (like in KDE)? I'd be using it with Hyprland.

[flexibeast]

i use Wofi, but i've not tried to use it with .desktop files; this thread on the Arch forums suggests it's possible (and specifically mentions doing so under Hyprland).

[leyvi]

All these programs seem to read a list of items from standard input, and echo the selected option. Are they meant to be used in scripts? As in:

Code: Select all

exec $(applications.txt > bemenu [my arguments here])

Where applications.txt contains:

Code: Select all

librewolf --arg1 --large
thunderbird --arg1
…

Is that how I'm meant to use them?

By the way, Wofi looks like another dmenu clone.

[Anon-E-moose]

I use fuzzel which does read desktop files but also does drun style stuff (application not desktop)
written by the guy who wrote foot and several other programs, all wayland apps.

but there are plenty to choose from in a variety of languages,
see https://github.com/rcalixte/awesome-way ... #launchers for more.

[flexibeast]

All these programs seem to read a list of items from standard input, and echo the selected option. Are they meant to be used in scripts? As in:

Code: Select all

exec $(applications.txt > bemenu [my arguments here])

Where applications.txt contains:

Code: Select all

librewolf --arg1 --large
thunderbird --arg1
…

Is that how I'm meant to use them?

In 'dmenu mode', yes. However, other 'modes' are available, including 'drun mode', which sounds like it's applicable to your use-case; more on that below.

By the way, Wofi looks like another dmenu clone.

In part, yes. The name 'Wofi' is riffing on Rofi, mentioned at the bottom of the 'Wofi' page on the wiki. Quoting the wofi(1) man page:

wofi is a rofi inspired menu program for wlroots compositors such as sway. It is intended to be highly customizable and flexible with the help of CSS styling and a dmenu mode that allows for endless scriptability. Wofi can be run cacheless in dmenu mode automatically by invoking it as dmenu with symlink.

Wofi has non-dmenu modes, as described in the wofi(7) man page:

Currently wofi has 3 built in modes

1. run - searches $PATH for executables and allows them to be run by selecting them.
2. drun - searches $XDG_DATA_HOME/applications and $XDG_DATA_DIRS/applications for desktop files and allows them to be run by selecting them.
3. dmenu - reads from stdin and displays options which when selected will be output to stdout.

In my own setup, i have a wofi_run.sh script, and have bound "<super> m" in my compositor (Wayfire) to call 'wofi_run.sh run'.