Walker - A Modern Application Launcher

A fast, customizable application launcher built with GTK4 and Rust, designed for Linux desktop environments. Walker provides a clean, modern interface for launching applications, running commands, performing calculations, and more.

GitBook Documentation/Wiki

Features

The following Elephant providers are implemented by default:

• Desktop Applications: Launch installed GUI applications
• Calculator: Perform mathematical calculations with = prefix
• File Browser: Navigate and open files with / prefix
• Command Runner: Execute shell commands
• Websearch: Search the web with custom-defined engines
• Clipboard History: Access clipboard history with : prefix
• Symbol Picker: Insert special symbols with . prefix
• Provider List: Switch between providers with ; prefix
• Menu Integration: Create custom menus with elephant and let walker display them
• Dmenu: Your good old dmenu ... with seamless menus!
• Arch Linux Packages: Search through available packages (official and aur), install or delete a target! List all exlusively installed packages.
• Todo List: create simple todo items with basic time tracking, scheduling and notifications
• Bookmarks: manage bookmarks, open with specified browsers, assign categories and import bookmarks from browsers
• Bluetooth: basic bluetooth management
• Niri Actions: list niri actions
• Niri Sessions: create stored sets of workspaces/apps
• Bitwarden/1Password: access your passwords
• Wireplumber: handle sound input/output
• Snippets: access text-snippets
• Windows: list and focus opened windows

Installation

Build from Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/abenz1267/walker.git
cd walker

# Build with Cargo
cargo build --release

# Run Walker
./target/release/walker

Dependencies

• GTK4 (version 4.6+)
• gtk4-layer-shell
• Protocol Buffers compiler
• cairo
• poppler-glib
• make sure elephant is running before starting Walker

<details> <summary> <h3> Install using Nix </h3> </summary>

1. Add flake inputs

Add walker and elephant to the inputs of your configs flake.nix and set walker to follow elephant

elephant.url = "github:abenz1267/elephant";

walker = {
  url = "github:abenz1267/walker";
  inputs.elephant.follows = "elephant";
};

2. Install walker

You have 3 options for installing walker.

Option A (Home Manager Module): Import the home-manager module to your home-manager config and enable walker.

imports = [inputs.walker.homeManagerModules.default];

programs.walker.enable = true;

Option B (NixOS Module): Import the nixos module in your NixOS config and enable walker

imports = [inputs.walker.nixosModules.default];

programs.walker.enable = true;

Note: this option doesn't support the runAsService option; It is recommended that you launch the elephant and walker services using your desktop instead.

Option C (Package): Add inputs.walker.packages.<system>.default to your system packages or home-manager packages. replace <system> with your system architecture. Note: This option doesn't support configuration using nix.

home.packages = [inputs.walker.packages.<system>.default];

environment.systemPackages = [inputs.walker.packages.<system>.default];

3. Configure walker

programs.walker = {
  enable = true;
  runAsService = true; # Note: this option isn't supported in the NixOS module only in the home-manager module

  # All options from the config.toml can be used here https://github.com/abenz1267/walker/blob/master/resources/config.toml
  config = {
    theme = "your theme name";
    placeholders."default" = { input = "Search"; list = "Example"; };
    providers.prefixes = [
      {provider = "websearch"; prefix = "+";}
      {provider = "providerlist"; prefix = "_";}
    ];
    keybinds.quick_activate = ["F1" "F2" "F3"];
  };

  # Set `programs.walker.config.theme="your theme name"` to choose the default theme
  themes = {
    "your theme name" = {
      # Check out the default css theme as an example https://github.com/abenz1267/walker/blob/master/resources/themes/default/style.css
      style = " /* css */ ";

      # Check out the default layouts for examples https://github.com/abenz1267/walker/tree/master/resources/themes/default
      layouts = {
        "layout" = " <!-- xml --> ";
        "item_calc" = " <!-- xml --> ";
        # other provider layouts
      };
    };
    "other theme name" = {
        # ...
    };
    # more themes
  };
};

Optionally, there is 2 binary caches which can be used by adding the following to you config:

nix.settings = {
  extra-substituters = ["https://walker.cachix.org" "https://walker-git.cachix.org"];
  extra-trusted-public-keys = ["walker.cachix.org-1:fG8q+uAaMqhsMxWjwvk0IMb4mFPFLqHjuvfwQxE4oJM=" "walker-git.cachix.org-1:vmC0ocfPWh0S/vRAQGtChuiZBTAe4wiKDeyyXM0/7pM="];
};

</details>

Usage

Basic Usage

Make sure elephant is running and you have providers installed. elephant-providerlist and f.e. elephant-desktopapplications.

Launch Walker with walker.

In order to improve startup performance, run a Walker service with:

walker --gapplication-service

If the service is running, you can either open Walker with:

walker

or for an even faster launch make a socket call, f.e. with openbsd-netcat:

nc -U /run/user/1000/walker/walker.sock

The downside of the socket call is that it does not handle any commandline options, so it's just a faster alternative to a simple walker call.

Keybinds

The following modifier keys are valid: ctrl, alt, shift, super.

To get a full list of possible key values, look here: GDK key-values.

F.e. pub const GDK_KEY_semicolon: c_int = 59; means that ctrl semicolon would be a valid keybind.

Config

Configuration should be done in ~/.config/walker.

Check out the default config.

Theming

You can customize Walker's appearance by creating a custom theme. Checkout resources/themes/default for the default theme. Themes inherit the default theme by default, so if you just want to change the CSS, you can just create themes/yours/style.css.

You can customize rendering of list items for each provider individually, f.e. "item_files.xml" will define the layout for items sourced from the files provider.

Please refer to the GTK4 docs to checkout how to write *.xml files for GTK4.

You can set the default theme in your config.toml f.e. theme = "yours".

Contributing

Please do not make PRs to fix single typos. Fix all or nothing.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.