xlunch

Graphical app launcher for X, using pure Xlib and Imlib2.

Use the mouse wheel for smooth scrolling, or drag the scrollbar on the right. Clicking the scrollbar track moves its thumb to the pointer. --noscroll disables scrolling. Use --nostretchrows for fixed row gaps set by --leastvmargin (or --leastmargin).

Use --windowed --width 800 --height 600 --center-window to center a window on the X screen. This overrides explicit coordinates; --center still centers icons. Use --class Pi-Apps to set the WM_CLASS class independently of --name.

Focus adds an optional interface with an INI profile, category navigation, fixed favorites, search, session actions and configurable colors, fonts, spacing and component visibility. The default classic interface and existing configurations remain supported.

make xlunch
./xlunch --check-ui-config extra/focus.ini.example
./xlunch --ui-config extra/focus.ini.example

Adjust the example's favorite desktop IDs, logo, icons and session commands for your system. Native desktop launching uses gio launch by default (Debian package libglib2.0-bin), or the executable and argument list configured under [desktop]. Use --input entries.dsv after the profile to display an existing DSV instead. Bundled interface SVGs use librsvg/Cairo at runtime for sharp rendering at the requested size. Their license is included in extra/focus-icons. See the profile and configuration documentation.

Desktop catalogs load from ~/.cache/xlunch by default ($XDG_CACHE_HOME/xlunch when set), including resolved icons and uncompressed pixels at the configured sizes. After the first frame, a separate process refreshes the snapshot at nice priority 19. A completed refresh updates the open menu while preserving its query, category, scroll and selected desktop ID. Launching an application or closing the menu cancels the refresh; incomplete files never replace the previous snapshot. Missing or damaged snapshots fall back to scanning desktop files.

Create a snapshot during image preparation without a running X server:

xlunch --ui-config /etc/xlunch/focus.ini --rebuild-cache

Use the same HOME, locale, PATH, XDG environment and appearance settings as the target session. Different contexts get separate snapshots. Runtime buttons do not affect the cache key. This cache applies to entries.source=desktop; streamed DSV input stays live.

website

detailed info at: http://www.xlunch.org/

compile and test with:

make test

on some distros libimlib2-dev and libx11 are needed for compilation.

For Ubuntu and other Debian-based distros, do:

sudo apt install libimlib2-dev libx11-dev

For Fedora:

sudo dnf install imlib2-devel libX11-devel

Package builders can use make GENERATE_ENTRIES=0 and make install DESTDIR=/path/to/package GENERATE_ENTRIES=0 to skip generating entries.dsv from the build host. Generate or supply the target system's entries separately, or use a Focus profile with entries.source=desktop.

genentries --theme expects an icon theme from /usr/share/icons (or a user icon directory), such as Adwaita, rather than a GTK theme such as Adwaita-dark from /usr/share/themes. Diagnostics go to stderr so redirected DSV stays clean.

screenshots

Version 3 of xlunch added a lot of customization options, here are some of them in use: