hmenu

A rofi-style launcher for X11 that outsources everything interesting: items come from shell commands, matching comes from fzf.

A centered window with a typed filter and a vertical list. Type to filter (exactly fzf's matching — it is fzf, run with --filter on every keystroke), Return runs the selected line with sh -c, Shift+Return runs it in a terminal (hterm -e sh -c ...), Escape cancels. If nothing matches, Return runs what you typed — or, for modes with a fallback (run, hist: a web search in hweb), that; Ctrl+Return runs the fallback from anywhere.

hmenu                 # the default modes from config.h: win, app, run
hmenu app             # a mode by name (XDG desktop applications)
hmenu hist            # hweb browsing history; Return opens the url in hweb,
                      # unmatched text (or Ctrl+Return) searches it in hweb
hmenu 'ls ~/scripts'  # any command; its output lines become the items
hmenu --title 'Which branch?' 'git branch --format=%(refname:short)'
                      # a title above the input says what the menu is for
                      # (newlines kept, long lines wrapped)
b=$(hmenu -p 'git branch --format=%(refname:short)')
                      # -p prints the chosen line (or the typed text when
                      # nothing matches) instead of running it; Escape
                      # exits 1 — dmenu-style, for scripts

An item line may contain a tab: the part before it is shown and matched, the part after it is what runs. Two helper flags print lists in that shape: hmenu -l (open windows, activated via hmenu -a id) and hmenu -d (XDG desktop entries, with Exec field codes stripped, Terminal=true wrapped in the terminal).

Configuration is layered, weakest first: config.h defaults (recompile), ~/.config/hackable/hmenu.conf (runtime, optional), and HMENU_* environment variables (per invocation). The file is plain key = value lines — values raw, no quoting, a trailing backslash continues a long one — plus [mode <name>] sections that add new item sources or override built-in ones, and args for what a bare hmenu shows:

fontsize = 16
lines = 20
args = win app run pass scripts

[mode scripts]
cmd = ls -1 ~/bin

HMENU_FALLBACK='answer: %s\thai answer %s' gives a list command's menu a fallback of its own (a mode's still wins), so unmatched typed text can become an answer rather than a command — how hai asks questions, with the question itself as the --title. hmenu --check validates the file (syntax, unknown keys, bad numbers) and lists the resulting modes without opening a window; a broken file never stops hmenu — it warns and runs on the defaults. Key names are in config.h's comments; the reader is vendor/hconf.h, shared across the hackable tools.

hmenu tags its window _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_DIALOG; the hws overview yields its keyboard grab to such windows, so you can summon hmenu and launch apps on top of the workspace overview.

Build

make            # needs libX11, libXrandr, libXft; fzf at runtime
make install    # symlink into ~/.local/bin