awelauncher

Run in awe! 🚀

A fast, minimal Wayland launcher built with Qt6 and QtQuick.

A system engineer’s launcher.

Features

• Fuzzy search: Smart scoring with precision matching (Exact/Prefix/Fuzzy)
• Pins & Aliases: Pin favorite apps or create custom aliases (e.g. gc -> git commit)
• Multiple modes:
  • Desktop apps (drun) - Supports Actions, Keywords, Categories ("Game", "Settings")
  • Command runner (run)
  • Window switcher (window) - Wayland window management
  • Process Manager (top, kill) - New in 0.4.0
  • SSH Launcher (ssh) - New in 0.4.0
• Provider Sets: Create custom workflows (e.g., --set dev) combining specific providers and filters.
• Visual Polish: Context icons, empty state overlays, and smart fallbacks.
• Window controls: Switch, close, fullscreen, maximize, minimize, move to monitor
• Dmenu compliance: Scriptable input/output mode (-d)
• MRU boost: Recently used apps/windows appear higher in results
• Icon caching: Async loading with disk cache for instant startup
• Theming: YAML-based themes + base16 system theme support
• Performance: 76ms cold start, < 16ms search updates
• Wayland-first: Native Wayland support with Qt6

Building

With Nix (recommended)

nix develop
cd build
cmake ..
make

Manual build

Requirements:

• Qt6 (Quick, Gui, WaylandClient)
• yaml-cpp
• CMake 3.16+
• C++20 compiler

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make

Branding

The project logo is available in multiple sizes in the assets/ directory, ranging from 16x16 to 512x512 pixels, for use in various system integrations.

# From build directory
sudo make install

# Or with Nix
nix build

Configuration

Example configs are in examples/config/. Copy to ~/.config/awelauncher/:

mkdir -p ~/.config/awelauncher/themes
cp examples/config/config.yaml ~/.config/awelauncher/
cp examples/config/themes/*.yaml ~/.config/awelauncher/themes/

Usage

Basic Modes

# Launch desktop app picker
awelaunch --show drun

# Launch command runner
awelaunch --show run

# Launch window switcher (Wayland)
awelaunch --show window

Utility Modes (New)

# Top processes (snapshot)
awelaunch --show top

# Kill process (fuzzy find + kill)
awelaunch --show kill

# Connect via SSH (parses ~/.ssh/config)
awelaunch --show ssh

Provider Sets (Advanced)

Define sets in config.yaml to mix providers, filter results, and customize the prompt.

# Activate 'dev' set (e.g., run + top + ssh)
awelaunch --set dev

Customization

# Use custom theme
awelaunch --theme catppuccin

# Enable debug output
awelaunch -g

# Override window geometry
awelaunch --width 1000 --height 50 --anchor top

# Dmenu mode (read stdin, print stdout)
echo -e "Option A\nOption B" | awelaunch -d

Keybindings

All modes:

• Esc - Dismiss launcher
• Enter - Activate selected item
• ↑/↓ - Navigate results
• Type to fuzzy search

Window mode only:

• Ctrl+M - Move window to another monitor
• Ctrl+D - Close window
• Ctrl+F - Toggle fullscreen
• Ctrl+X - Toggle maximize
• Ctrl+N - Toggle minimize

Architecture

• Controllers: LauncherController - handles app launching and window actions
• Models: LauncherModel - manages items and search filtering
• Providers:
  • DesktopFileLoader - scans .desktop files
  • IconProvider - async icon loading
  • WindowProvider - Wayland window enumeration and control
• Utils: Config, theme, fuzzy matcher, MRU tracker

See docs/rfcs/000-design-spec.md for full design specification.

Performance

• Startup: 76ms cold (exceeds < 50ms warm target)
• Search: < 16ms for 5k items
• Icons: Async + disk cache, never blocks typing

License

BSD-3-Clause

Credits

Built with Qt6, inspired by wofi and walker.