Discovering dmenu

Date: 2020-09-18

Dmenu started as a launcher for programs, mainly for tiling window managers, but any desktop environment can use it. As usually happens with the Linux and free software world, people like to hack stuff, trying to extended software capabilities, even if the original author doesn't inteded to use it that way. Dmenu is no different, and if we see some of stuff people can do with it, they are just jawdropping.

I am currently using dmenu as my launcher, it can both start scripts that in my ~/.local/bin (this is where I put my AppImages) or if installed software has a desktop shortcut. I use the modified j4-dmenu-desktop for that.

Beyond the launcher

I have recently discovered some decent script that I built into my system. Here are some that I use currently, or tried using.

clipmenu

Clipmenu is a clipboard manager for dmenu. I used to use greenclip for rofi, then I moved to clipit, and now I am with clipmenu. Very simple to install and the only thing we need to do is to autostart "clipmenud", then use a shortcut to show our clipboard. If you are working with texts, this utility is a must.

chwall-dmenu

This was a surprise find. Chwall is a simple script, that uses the "find" command to look for image files in specified directory (or directories), then use a wallpaper setter like xwallpaper or feh to set it as the current wallpaper under a specified name. If you want that wallpaper to be your default when you start your system, you just use the same command for feh or xwallpaper. I personally use feh, it's simple enough and I know how to use it.

Tip: you can add another directory for find to look for images with this syntax: find directory1 directory2 etc

dmenu keepass

I am still struggling making autotype work. Otherwise it's fast, and handles my passwords well. Once you set it up, you can add and edit entries, which makes KeepassXC fun to use, and much easier than starting it all the time. It can only handle kdbx databases, I think.

Github repo

If you are using pass, you can use dmenu_pass

dmenufm

It's a file manager, inside dmenu. Honestly I only installed it and I haven't played with it much, but it looks promising. It feels responsive even if many files are in the view.

Others

There is dmenu suite , which is a script collection from MaryHal. You can set brightness, use DVD's menu with mpv, kill processes interface for mpd via mpc, shutdown menu, etc. I am interested in dvdmenu, but I couldn't make it work with dmenu, only with fzf. This is also old and seems abandoned, so maybe dmenu changed and that's why it's not working with it.

I am sure there are many others…

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