j4-dmenu-desktop is a replacement for i3-dmenu-desktop. It's purpose is to find .desktop files and offer you a menu to start an application using dmenu. Since r2.7 j4-dmenu-desktop doesn't require i3wm anymore and should work just fine on about any desktop environment.
You can also execute shell commands using it.
- Compiler with C++17 support
- CMake or Meson
Building with Meson:
./meson-setup.sh build
cd build
ninja src/j4-dmenu-desktop
sudo meson install
Building with CMake:
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install
See BUILDING for more info.
The package is provided by the AUR. You can install it with an AUR helper of your choice: j4-dmenu-desktop-git or j4-dmenu-desktop. Else, you may install it manually by invoking the following commands as a regular user. (to build packages from the AUR, the base-devel package group is assumed to be installed)
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/j4-dmenu-desktop.git
cd j4-dmenu-desktop
makepkg -si
or for the latest:
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/j4-dmenu-desktop-git.git
cd j4-dmenu-desktop-git
makepkg -si
j4-dmenu-desktop is now available in the FreeBSD Ports Collection. A prebuilt package can be installed via
pkg install j4-dmenu-desktop
j4-dmenu-desktop is available in Portage for the amd64 and x86 architectures. You can install it via
echo "x11-misc/j4-dmenu-desktop ~amd64 ~x86" >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords
emerge --ask x11-misc/j4-dmenu-desktop
The package is also provided by the gentoo-el overlay. You can install it with the following commands as root. (you need to have layman installed and configured)
layman -a gentoo-el
echo "=x11-misc/j4-dmenu-desktop-9999 **" >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords
emerge x11-misc/j4-dmenu-desktop
The package is now in the apt repository. You can install it via
sudo apt-get install j4-dmenu-desktop
j4-dmenu-desktop is in Debian stable:
sudo apt install j4-dmenu-desktop
j4-dmenu-desktop is in nixpkgs:
nix-env --install j4-dmenu-desktop
# Or use pkgs attribute of the same name in NixOS configuration
Run j4-dmenu-desktop:
j4-dmenu-desktop
Specify custom dmenu (useful on Wayland, tofi is used as example):
j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu=tofi
Display 5 entries vertically at once:
j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu="dmenu -l5"
display binary name alongside name (for example Chromium will become Chromium (/usr/bin/chromium)):
j4-dmenu-desktop --display-binary
Don't display generic names and use alacritty as terminal emulator:
j4-dmenu-desktop --no-generic --term alacritty
You can put this in a script file and use it instead of calling j4dd directly:
j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu="(cat ; (stest -flx $(echo $PATH | tr : ' ') | sort -u)) | dmenu"
Exchanging the cat and (stest ... sort -u) parts will swap the two parts (j4dd's output and the list of binaries).
% time i3-dmenu-desktop --dmenu="cat"
[{"success":true}]
i3-dmenu-desktop --dmenu="cat" 0.37s user 0.02s system 96% cpu 0.404 total
% time ./j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu=cat
./j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu=cat 0.01s user 0.01s system 107% cpu 0.015 total
More than 25 times faster :)