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?
I ended up coding my own.
Lots of stuff I’d want in an applications launcher on hyperland. I’d need it to have all the functions of the important system indicators and essentially take the role of the top panel in gnome.
Krunner is great.
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.
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.
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.
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):
- favorites on panel and my keyboard shortcuts
- app menu with categories, navigating with mouse
- run tool to search for app name and description (also integrated into the app menu)
- 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.
