Lawnch

lightweight and strictly Wayland-native launcher. Built with wlr and cairo to fast and easy on RAM by avoiding heavy toolkits like GTK.

It features a plugin system and Vim-like mode filtering.

Features

• Pure Wayland: Built using wayland-client and wlr-layer-shell protocols.
• Zero Bloat: No GTK/Qt dependencies. Just, Cairo, and Pango.
• Vim-like Filters: Use commands like :h or :apps to switch between search contexts.
• Plugin System: Extensible via shared objects (.so). Write your own or use plugins from here.
• lawnchpm: A built-in plugin manager to build and install plugins on non-Nix distros.

Usage

Lawnch uses a filter command system kind of like Vim. You can switch to specific plugins by typing a colon followed by a keyword.

Command	Action
:h or :help	Show all available plugins and their filter keywords.
:a or :apps	Search installed applications.
:b or :bins	Search executables in your $PATH.
:<plugin_name>	Switch to the the plugin (e.g. :p for powermenu).

Note: Filters are defined by the plugins themselves and can be customized. plugins can allow to customize filter key. For more info click here

Installation

Nix / NixOS (Recommended)

Lawnch has a flake with a home manager module.

inputs = {
  lawnch.url = "github:hoppxi/lawnch";
  # ...
};

# in your config
imports = [
  inputs.lawnch.homeModules.default
];

programs.lawnch = {
  enable = true;
  package = inputs.lawnch.packages.${pkgs.system}.default;
  settings = {
    window.width = 600;
    input.font_size = 12;
  };
  plugins = {
    wallpapers = {
      enable = true;
      settings = {
        dir = "~/Pictures/Wallpapers";
        command = "waul --set '{}'";
      };
    };
  };
};

Other distro

Requirements:

• cmake, gcc, pkg-config
• wayland, wayland-scanner, wlr-protocols
• cairo, pango, xkbcommon, nlohmann_json, curl.
• inih, harfbuzz, librsvg, fontconfig

git clone https://github.com/hoppxi/lawnch.git
cd lawnch
cmake -B build
cmake --build build
# copy to $PATH, currenlty the makefile does not define install

Manage Plugins with lawnchpm:

lawnchpm install ./plugins/clipboard
lawnchpm enable clipboard
lawnchpm list

Configuration

Configuration loaded from ~/.config/lawnch/config.ini.

Styling

[window]
width=500
height=400
background_color=rgba(40, 40, 40, 0.80)
border_color=rgba(69, 133, 136, 0.80)
border_radius=12

[input]
font_family=Inter
font_size=10
text_color=rgba(235, 219, 178, 1)
horizontal_align=fill

[results]
selected_background_color=rgba(69, 133, 136, 0.8)
icon_size=24

you can find a complete config example at config/config.ini. and also config is not mandatory.

Plugins

To enable plugins manually in the config:

[plugins]
powermenu=true
wallpapers=true
calculator=true

# Plugin specific settings
[plugin/wallpapers]
dir = ~/Pictures/Wallpapers
max_results = 10

Plugin System

Lawnch plugins are compiled shared libraries (.so).

• located: Plugins are stored in ~/.local/share/lawnch/plugins.
• Development: Plugins uses the lawnch_plugin_api.h header.
• Structure: A plugin directory usually contains the C++ source and a CMakeLists.txt and deps.nix (if any deps needed to build).

To create a new plugin, check here and the plugins/ directory. and see powermenu as example plugin implementing the lawnch_plugin_api.h .

Contributing

If you are interested contribute to the plugins or anything you can.

License

MIT