Launcher for Everything*

where * refers to applications(or programs), executing commands/scripts, clipboard entries, copying and typing out long/specific/repetitive things, opening files, playing media, bookmarks, searching online, with default and specified search engine with “bangs”, calculations and conversions, and much more

23 June, 2024

Disclaimer :- This is my first article, and I don’t really know how to write, please forgive me for poor structuring or style or content, please help yourself with Table of contents

What are we doing again ?

It is essentially a “dmenu” like approach to launch/perform various things. My idea is to “package” it neatly such that it is easy to extend, and easy to use, be flexible in what programs you choose to perform various things, and not require much knowledge of programming to extend

Why are we doing this, hasn’t this been done million times ? Why is yours better ?

Yes it has been done many times, even my aim was to mimic krunner, basically all “twm users” do it, because these menus are easy and fast, and keyboard driven, my idea is not to replace anything, heck, I would not even call this a program, it is a “script”, it is just easy to use, and just a template where others can mold it there way.

And how exactly ?

I have written the launcher script in Posix Shellscript. Honestly speaking I have not checked the Posix spec, I have made it such that it works with dash(my /bin/sh). I only know Python, shellscripting, C, and Java, and between python and shellscripts, I chose shellscript because it was faster (I have not included benchmarks, but for certain sections, the difference was nearly 20-50 times)

You can find the scripts here. The idea is setup/operating system agnostic, but my scripts are not, so you may have to make changes.

I am including the launcher script here because i am going to reference it a lot

#!/bin/sh
payload=$({
  cliphist list | while read -r line ; do printf "Clipboard\t$line\n" ; done
  cat $XDG_STATE_HOME/application_cache $HOME/Backups/bookmarks
  find $HOME/Music $HOME/Videos/Movies $HOME/.local/bin -name "*" | while read -r line ; do printf "File\t$line\n" ; done
})
# in most of the script, i am using printf "%s" instead of echo or echo -E, because in some of my bookmarks, i have escape codes, or such thing, which break and printf "%s" seems to preserve it the best
selection=$( printf "%s" "$payload" | term-dmenu )

# Using fzf(via term-dmenu), which by default does fuzzy search, searching for online stuff or playing media or youtube links requires exactness, and fzf --exact is to strict(like it will search full input string, not the terms like dmenu). We can apply special modifiers to term - ' for exact, ^ for prefix exact, . for suffix exact, ! for inverse (reject) and combinations, so trimming them from 1st and second terms (which seems to be enough to make search good) This function strips the few specified symbols from the front of input, this is used for selection and also for selected_option_1
remove_first_char() {
  local input="$@"
  case "$(printf %.1s "$input")" in
    \'|'^'|'!'|'*')
      printf "%s" "$input" | cut -c2-;;
    *)
      printf "%s" "$input";;
  esac
}

# uncomment the printf statements for debugging
selection=$(remove_first_char "$selection") # && printf "%s" "$selection" && printf "\n"
identifier=$(printf "%s" "$selection" | cut -f 1) # && printf "%s" "$identifier" && printf "\n"
selected_option=$(printf "%s" "$selection" | cut -f 2) # && printf "%s" "$selected_option" && printf "\n"

# Perform actions based on the identifier
case "$identifier" in
  "Application") gtk-launch $(echo "$selection" | awk 'NF>1{print $NF}') ;; # instead of using gtk-launch, you can also use exec, and include the exec line in application cache
  "Copy") wl-copy --trim-newline "$selected_option" ;;
  "Type") wtype "$selected_option" ;; # stuff to be auto-typed anywhere you want (currrently using to write long commands)
  "Exec") eval "$selected_option" ;;
  "ExecCopy") eval "$selected_option" | wl-copy --trim-newline ;;
  "ExecType") eval "$selected_option" | wtype - ;;
  "Clipboard") printf "%s" "$selection" | cut -f 2- | cliphist decode | wl-copy --trim-newline ;;
  # replace librewolf, with default browser, or your prefered browser
  "Web") exec librewolf "$selected_option" ;;
  "Firefox") exec librewolf "$selected_option" ;; # for librewolf specific pages like about: stuff, i have bookmarked ab:config/profile for quick access
  "Edit") exec editor-terminal "$selected_option" ;;
  "File") exec xdg-open "$selected_option" ;;
  *)
    # these are used when no matches happen (if anything matches, then match is returned, if not what was typed), we input the identifier ourselves, and the remaining becomes the selected_option_1, for example search the selected_option_1
    # can be used as a way to easily use ddg "bangs", but more flexible, and browser/search engine agnostic
    identifier_1="$(printf "%s" "$selection" | cut -d' ' -f 1)"
    selected_option_1="$(printf "%s" "$selection" | cut -d' ' -f 2-)"
    selected_option_1="$(remove_first_char "$selected_option_1")"
    # printf "%s" "$identifier_1" && printf "\n"
    # printf "%s" "$selected_option_1" && printf "\n"
    wl-copy "$selected_option_1" # copying the selection, helps in rerunning the command (helpful in debugging, or for example with calculator or music, where you slightly messed it up)
    case "$identifier_1" in
      "save") url="$(printf "%s" "$selected_option_1" | cut -d' ' -f 1)"
        description="$(printf "%s" "$selected_option_1" | cut -d' ' -f 2-)"
        printf "Web\t$url\t$description\n" >> /home/sg/Backups/bookmarks
        notify-send "Bookmark added $url" "$description" ;;
      "ytsub") channel_id="$(printf "%s" "$selected_option_1" | grep -oP '(?<=channel/)\K.*')"
        printf "https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=$channel_id" >> /home/sg/.config/newsboat/urls ;;
      "wiki") librewolf https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search="$selected_option_1" ;;
      "compress") /home/sg/.local/bin/compress "$selected_option_1" ;;
      "ddg") librewolf https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q="$selected_option_1" ;;
      "yts") footclient --app-id floating-terminal -e ytfzf --detach --notify-playing --force-youtube "$selected_option_1" ;;
      "play") footclient --app-id floating-terminal -e ytfzf --detach --notify-playing --force-youtube -m "$selected_option_1" ;;
      "mpv") mpv "$selected_option_1" ;;
      "ytdl") yt-dlp "$selected_option_1" ;;
      "expand") url=$(curl http://urlxray.com/display.php?url="$selected_option_1" | rg title | cut -d'>' -f 3 | cut -d'<' -f 1 | cut -d' ' -f 2)
        wl-copy "$url" && notify-send "Url expands to $url" "Url copied to clipboard" ;;
      "upload") url=$(curl -F'file=@'"$selected_option_1" -Fsecret= "https://envs.sh/")
        wl-copy "$url" && notify-send "File uploaded to $url" "Url copied to clipboard" ;;
      "download") aria2c "$selected_option_1" ;;
      "teams") teams-for-linux --url "$selected_option_1" ;;
      "calc") result=$(qalc +u8 --terse "$selected_option_1")
        wl-copy "$result" && notify-send "$selected_option_1 = $result" "Result copied to clipboard" ;;
      "sxpkg") librewolf https://search.sapti.me/search?q="site:archlinux.org/packages/ bin/$selected_option_1" ;; # searching a file in arch packages
      *) if [ -n "$selection" ]; then librewolf https://search.sapti.me/search?q="$selection" ; fi ;; # for some wierd reason, i can not use the librewolf --search flag, it works, but it will always open a new window, something i do not like, so have to hard code the search engine (--new-tab does not work)
    esac ;;
esac

How does this work

• we are first making a “payload” - the thing which will search in
  • I am using cliphist to get my clipboard entries, quick access to clipboard is great for stupidly copying to things, I am even using it save some results (search queries, links to “media” being played,calculation results, etc)
  • $XDG_STATE_HOME/application_cache contains output of update-application-database which finds all .desktop files in the usual locations and prepares a cache, many DEs even do so, since finding desktop files each time is a bit more expensive (script takes twice as long if I search it each time). We launch it with gtk-launch, you can change script, and include exec line, and use that to launch stuff. If you can somehow set it, set it to execute it each time there is a package-manager event (called something like post install scripts). Here is a sample of how it looks
    Application About Xfce Information about the Xfce Desktop Environment xfce4-about.desktop
  • bookmarks this is the everything file, if you want, you can make one for each category, or just separate the web bookmarks, here is the structure
    Identifier \t Entry \t (Comments or Tags(optional))
    I use “ tabs as to separate Identifier and Entry. All examples for each kind are in this format. If you want to use something else, then change it, just update the cut -f lines in script with some other delimiter -d' '
    I now use it for practically everything
    • Files to be opened with xdg-open, I have put some of the common config files, or my notes file, the following line is very similar, where I include all the files in certain dirs, like music (so the launcher is interface to my local media)

      •   find $HOME/Music $HOME/Videos/Movies $HOME/.local/bin -name "*" | while read -r line ; do printf "File\t$line\n" ; done

    • Copy to copy some long stuff, or stuff you copy often, like mail id, or lorem-ipsum

      •   Copy    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.   Dummy text

    • Type is to type out long stuff, I am now using it for long commands, that I earlier was using aliases, cheatsheets, navi for, and there is no major enhancement, other than the fact that it is almost as fast, but within one same menu. I am using wtype to type out stuff, ydotool had more options, but breaks in printing some stuff. Here is a command to print a fancy gradient rainbow with awk

      •   Type  awk 'BEGIN{s="________________________________";s=s s s s s s s s;for(colnum=0;colnum<77;colnum++){r=255-(colnum*255/76);g=(colnum*510/76);b=(colnum*255/76);if(g>255)g=510-g;printf "\033[48;2;%d;%d;%dm",r,g,b;printf "\033[38;2;%d;%d;%dm",255-r,255-g,255-b;printf "%s\033[0m",substr(s,colnum+1,1);}printf "\n";}'  rainbow text with awk terminal, check color capacity of terminal

    • Exec to execute any command, this is the singe best thing, and the reason why I have 20-30 less keyboard shortcuts in my sway config, I use it toggle my bluetooth connection, change vpns, clean system, because I have made scripts for them or included relevant commands, or launching windows games with long wine params. Here is example command to clear clipboard (useful if the command you want to execute is also in your clipboard). This has subset ExecCopy (an example to copy the colour code) and ExecType (I use this and kpxcpc to somewhat safely (without copying to/from clipboard) type long passwords from KeepassXC outside browser)
      • Exec cliphist wipe Clear Clipboard
        
      • ExecCopy hyprpicker Color Picker
    • Web for your browser bookmarks. Now you need not give up having bookmarks in your browser, you can keep your bookmarks, just export to html, and convert to required format with parse-bookmarks-file, but I moved all bookmarks, and i do not want to move back 600+ lines back, the benefit of using it is much better search algorithm, and much easier to share some sections of bookmarks with others (if you have categorized then correctly, with some sed magic) (but you dont have to move your bookmarks for this). A great video if you would like an intro to using sed
      • Web https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
• I then select stuff with term-dmenu (adapted from Seirdy/term-dmenu, changes include hard coding the use of footclient as terminal, and ensuring input stays intact), which is basically fzf wrapped in a floating terminal window
  • I initially used tofi, it is great and fast, but less customisability (specifically no way to ellipsise the middle, since I want to see the comments)
  • rofi is great with that, but not great (compared to fzf) searching algorithm
  • fzf is great, but way too flexible, but you can use ' or ! or * or . to get great refinement, and especially useful for later section of script where we have essentially no matches and perform actions based on input
• then we have some splitting and moving stuff around, and using cases to perform actions
• for cases with no matches, we have new set of identifiers, which we type, to either
  • search in specific search engines (or search with the default one if no identifier given) or
  • search youtube to play music or normal videos, using ytfzf, yt-dlp, and mpv(I earlier used only yt-dlp to perform search, but ytfzf is plain better and easier) or
  • performing calculations with qalc (I earlier used bc and python, bc is worse, and python is much more flexible, but harder to use in this setup) or
  • anything you like to add, like a command you would perform in a drop-down terminal, because it just like that, if you want to wait for results, or do something with output, you can use notifications or copy results

Dependencies

• basically all of posix
• cliphist and wlcip
• gtk-launch
• browser
• libnotify
• wtype (or xdotool or ydotool (breaks in some cases with certain commands with escape codes))
• ytfzf, yt-dlp, mpv
• qalc (or dc/dc or python)

Discussion

Video Demo