Tech

Fuzzel: A great dmenu and rofi alternative for Wayland

Different examples of Fuzzel in action

Fuzzel is a versatile app and utility launcher for Wayland. If you are familiar with dmenu and rofi, fuzzel is largely compatible with them.

Screenshots

What's Fuzzel good for?

Besides launching applications, as a dmenu alternative Fuzzel can be used for many utility tasks. These include:

Emoji picker with bemoji
Password picker, with dmenu-lpass
TOTP MFA code picker, with yubikey-oath-dmenu
Clipboard picker, with clipman
Download picker, with dmenufm
Network connection picker with networkmanger_dmenu
Qutebrowser history/bookmark picker with dmenu_qutebrowser
Picking a window, output, or workspace to switch to with swayr

Fuzzel's features

For app launching

Fuzzy-find applications from a list and launch them
Icon support
Remembers frequently launched applications
Customize which .desktop files are searched
Option to filter apps based on OnlyShowIn and NotShowIn
Startup notification support
Launch prefix option to customize how apps are launched
Display a large icon of current selection if there are only a few matches
Option to display executables in $PATH
Option to execute the input rather than return an app
Support for localized strings

For dmenu mode

dmenu mode where newline separated entries are read from STDIN
Support for Rofi's protocol to support icons
Optional cache with custom path
Password mode
Prompt-only mode
Exact-match option to support multi-stage menus
Option to return index of what's selected rather than what's selected
Some dmenu option compatibility. Invoking it as dmenu enables dmenu mode
Option for null-separated input

For all modes

Numerous customizable key bindings, based on Emacs
Mouse support
Paste support
A number of theming options, which can be set in a separate include file
fzf-style matching with ability to filter huge lists
Optimized for performance
Zsh and Fish completions
Support for true fractional scaling
Wayland native

For details, see man fuzzel and man fuzzel.ini

Here's my Fuzzel config from ~/.config/fuzzel/fuzzel.ini:

dpi-aware=no
icon-theme=Papirus-Dark
width=25
font=Hack:weight=bold:size=36
line-height=50
fields=name,generic,comment,categories,filename,keywords
terminal=foot -e
prompt="❯   "
show-actions=yes
exit-on-keyboard-focus-loss=no

[colors]
background=282a36fa
selection=3d4474fa
border=fffffffa

[border]
radius=20

[dmenu]
exit-immediately-if-empty=yes

Example swayr config for fuzzel

Here's a swayr config from ~/.config/swayr/config.toml that can be used with swayr switch-window. It demonstrates using an emoji in a prompt and also use's Fuzzel's new support for icons in dmenu mode:

[menu]
executable = 'fuzzel'
args = [
    '--dmenu',
     '--prompt=🪟❯ ',
     '--width=100',
     '--font=Hack Nerd Font Mono:style=Bold:size=18',
     '--line-height=28',
]

[format]
window_format = "{app_name:{:<11.11}} “{title:{:<60.60}...}” {id:{:<3.3}} on {workspace_name:{:<13.13}}\u0000icon\u001f{app_icon}"
indent = '    '

Alternatives to Fuzzel

I have another page on Rofi and dmenu alternatives for Wayland:

Fuzzel: A great dmenu and rofi alternative for Wayland

Screenshots

What's Fuzzel good for?