What are the best Linux app launchers?

Question

32

Options
Considered

440

User
Recs.

29 mins

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 1 of 28 OptionsWhy?

Best Linux app launchers	Price	File Size	Publisher
94 Rofi	FREE	529KiB	Dave Davenport
86 Dmenu	-	-	-
83 Ulauncher	-	-	-
82 Albert	-	-	-
-- Docky	-	-	-

See Full List

27 Other Options Considered

Dmenu

Top Pro

Blazing fast

xero harrison's Experience

fast, lightweight, extensible/scriptable, minimal See More

Specs

System resource usage:Low

Top Pro

Keyboard-centric

you don't need a mouse to use it See More

Top Pro

Fast / low resource consumption

It doesn't run in the background, use up much RAM, or lag. See More

Top Pro

Suckless

Focus on simplicity, clarity, and frugality. See More

Top Pro

Visually customizable

Colors, prompt, location, size. See More

Top Pro

Extensible / Scriptable

You can easily script around it and do way more than just launch applications. See More

Top Pro

Highly usable in scripting, piping.

Programmed in smart way: less code is more usability and solid. See More

See All

Ulauncher

Top Pro

Simple

Ulauncher comes with very reasonable defaults, looks good and just works. See More

Top Con

Uses Electron (html/css/js)

Uses a little bit more RAM than native programs like rofi. See More

EarnestThoosa's Experience

Looks great; fast; light on resources. See More

Top Pro

Fast

Top Con

Pretty slow

AmbitiousElpis's Experience

Good selection of extensions. Simple, and solid. See More

Top Pro

Supports extensions in Python

With Ulauncher you can easily add and update third party extensions. From kill process to windows switching, many of them work very well. The extension API is documented and if you know Python you can create and share your own extensions. See More

cembalista's Experience

New, Simple and Functional. Great potential and easy documentation for creating extensions. See More

Top Pro

Allows custom shortcuts

InterestingAoGuang's Experience

Looks pretty, super fast, simple to set up See More

Top Pro

Themeable

ULauncher supports themes and comes with a good supply on install but more can also be made. See More

CourageousKisin's Experience

Very clean and beautiful, highly customizable with many useful plugins. See More

Top Pro

Supports fuzzy search

You can enter app name with a typo and Ulauncher will still be able to find it. See More

Diego Gramajo's Experience

Slick, cool, easy to use and customize. See More

Top Pro

Extensions are really easy to write by yourself

DreamerIapetus's Experience

Fast and clean. See More

Top Pro

Able to launch Kdialog, Zenity and Bash scripts

Extensions are easily created. Python script is all open to see. Not compiled like some. See More

ReceptiveChronos's Experience

Admirably simple, looks good and works well. See More

AuthenticMammetun's Experience

Easy to use keyboard shortcuts See More

Meta's Experience

Would definitely recommend for the extensions, it's nice to have everything in one bar. I hope a lighter UI will come in the future. See More

OrganizedNemain's Experience

Tried Albert, Zazu, and a few others. ULauncher is simple, fast, and does exactly what I need. See More

See All

Albert

Top Pro

Blazingly fast and lightweight

Written in C++. See More

Top Con

Keyboard navigation is not customizeable

ConfidentMinerva's Experience

Works perfectly. Really fast and pretty! See More

Top Pro

Support for plugins

Top Con

Plugins are centrally managed

Albert doesn't have an ecosystem of third party plugins like for example Alfred and Ulauncher does. All the plugins are maintained in the git repositories here and here. See More

David Aslan French's Experience

Beautiful, simple, powerful. Period. See More

Top Pro

Visual appearance customizable

Comes with predefinded themes. Customizable with QSS (a CSS dialect) See More

Top Con

Settings are complex

Albert comes with lot of options. It includes two different theming engines hand hence two sets of themes. It has two different plugin systems (for Python or C++). You also get all the plugins and their settings when you install it, since they're all maintained in the same repo. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Licensed under GPL See More

Top Pro

Dictionary lookup plugin

Through GoldenDict See More

Top Pro

Scriptable/Functionality customizable

External programs can be used to provide result items See More

Top Pro

Plugins doesn't require keywords

Other launchers often require a keyword to use a plugin. For example "conv 4ft to m". In Albert plugins doesn't need this, so there's less to type. See More

See All

Docky

Top Pro

Drag and drop apps to the dock

Users can easily drag and drop apps to the dock for easy launching. Any app that is added will stay on the dock until removed manually. This makes for a great way to have all of ones most used apps in one place. See More

Top Con

Removing Docky icon is not as easy as it should be

gconf editor is required in order to remove the Docky icon from the dock, which seems unnecessary as the setting exists, it should be in the app settings instead of hidden away in gconf. See More

Top Pro

Many themes

There are several themes installed with the dock by default that aare easily switched in the settings. What is even better is that there are many themes available online for download as well. With the best part being thatt he themes are simple .svg files that are easily editable in Inkscape to customize to how one wants. See More

Top Pro

Highly Customisable.

Top Pro

Plugin Docklets

Docky provides simple applications that run inside of the dock such as a clock, weather forecaster and CPU monitor. These provide an easy way to see information without having to open up separate apps. See More

Top Pro

Panel mode

For those that do not like the OSX dock look there is also a panel mode included that pushed the apps to the left side of the panel and elongates the dock to fill the entire bottom of the screen, just as a regular OS panel would. See More

See All

Synapse

Top Pro

Rock solid

Synapse is pretty rock solid. Works as expected and launches applications fast. See More

Top Con

Unable to search whole system

Due to Zeitgeist being used the search is not as robust as if it were using Tracker. Of course using Tracker has its own downside like battery drain, so currently there is no "best" solution. See More

Ajay Kumar Rawani's Experience

Awesome ! See More

Top Pro

Can run commands just as a terminal would

Users can run commands such as sudo apt-get update from within Synapse, making for a convenient way to open or run items/commands. See More

Top Con

Bound to control+space

Due to this it interferes with common IDE layouts for recommendations. Modifying hotkeys file doesn't adjust this. See More

Top Pro

Zeitgeist powered

Synapse searches the Zeitgeist log, which tends to be a pretty quick way to do searches over other app launchers. See More

Top Pro

Includes a Zeal plugin

Includes a Zeal plugin to make searching faster. See More

See All

Plank

Top Pro

Simple and minimal

Plank is a good choice for those looking for something simple that just does its job well. There is no UI for options built in to the dock as to change anything those options will have to be accessed through a text file. See More

Top Con

No UI for settings

Al settings will have to be changed in a text file located in /.config/plank/dock1/settings. See More

Top Pro

Third party themer available

An additional third party app has been developed that allows theming the dock without the use of any extra resources. This is great for those that are not using elementary OS and the elementary tweaks extra. See More

Top Con

Poor workplace awareness (cycling windows)

When configured to only show apps on current workspace, cycling an app open on multiple workspaces will switch workspace focus, update the dock and often leave you to cycle another app. See More

Top Pro

Solid and lightweight

Top Con

No right click menu for some apps outside of elementary OS

Other file explorers and terminals (those not found in the default elementary OS) do not have any right click menus for the dock meaning it is impossible to launch multiple windows for certain file explorers or terminals. See More

See All

DockbarX

Top Pro

Great plugin to help blend in to XFCE4 panel

DockbarX has an available plugin called "DockBarX Xfce4 Panel plugin" that allows DockbarX to blend in seamlessly with the XFCE4 panel, which is great for XFCE users due to the limited options of the default panel. See More

Top Con

Not actively updated

Less than a dozen updates since 2014: https://github.com/M7S/dockbarx/commits/master See More

Top Pro

Easily customized

DockbarX has inbuilt settings that allow the user to easily customize the look of the dock, from changing the text color to the background color. See More

Top Pro

Easily the best Win 7 taskbar functionality

If you want a combined launcher/manager, a la Win 7, this is it. See More

See All

Krunner

Top Pro

Fast

As it is written in Qt QtQuick using QML. See More

ArtisticPhraPhrom's Experience

Simply Awesome. Just Perfect !!! See More

Specs

File Size:1.4MiB

Publisher:KDE

System resource usage:Low

Top Pro

Opens folders/files also

Just by typing name of file or folder, it will give recommendations See More

Peter J. Mello's Experience

After years of using KDE Plasma, it's between this and Klipper for me as to the most excellent reasons never to use another desktop environment. Launch an app, find a file, open a browser to a URL, get a Unicode character you don't know the code for, perform simple arithmetic, show me synonyms and antonyms for any word, tell me what an acronym stands for... Krunner just says, "You got it, boss." Hells to the yes. I'll take three, thank you. (If the rumours are true about the next major version adding..."pleasuring techniques"...to the mix, you all can kiss me goodbye once and for all. Not kidding even a little.) See More

Top Pro

Can be used to open websites

By just typing an URL into the text box users can have the site open in their default launcher. See More

Top Pro

Extensible with plugins

Krunner can be extended with the use of "runners" which are essentially plugins for the app launcher to allow for extra functions. See More

See All

Cerebro

Top Pro

Extensible

List of plugins at https://github.com/lubien/awesome-cerebro#plugins See More

Top Con

Plugin selection is small

David Aslan French's Experience

Really great presentation AND cross platform which is great for someone who uses Windows for work but development does not seem to be very active, and the number of plugins pales in comparison to Wox which is what I use on my windows machine. If it were as good as Wox then it's cross platform would be make it shine but there are loads of launchers on linux already and cerebro doesn't add anything else particularly special. See More

Top Pro

Cross platform is a HUGE plus

Top Con

Development is not very active

CrediblePhaenon's Experience

Great launcher See More

Top Pro

Clean visual design

Top Con

No file system search

Top Pro

Measurement conversion and calculator

Top Pro

Navigate file system with previews

Top Pro

Closest approximate to look/feel of macOS's Spotlight on Linux

See All

bash

Top Con

Not an app launcher

It is a shell. Not an app launcher. See More

Top Pro

Recursive globbing

ls **/*.log for example is supported by Bash if you set shopt -s globstar. See More

ResourcefulRanginui's Experience

This is NOT an app launcher. It is a SHELL. See More

Top Con

Extremely complicated and inconsistent rules

In Bash, exceptions are the rule, not even all being described by the main page. There are a grand total of 5 different ways of quoting, sometimes even when one does not want to, for instance in command substitutions. These are all based around preserving the literal meaning of every character, with an exception list. There is even an exception list to the exception list in 4 of the 5, regarding how the backslash behaves! The behavior of the backslash is also one of the quoting rules, so naturally, it also has an exception in how it works when it stands before a newline as compared to other characters. Bash has several layers of interpretations, all to be kept in mind: The ~ expands to the home of the current user. So if you store it in a variable, can you use it that way? Nope: tilde expansion comes before variable expansion. Aha, so that's how it works! Then, since applying quotation happens after redirections are set up, it must mean that redirecting within quotes works, right? Nope: there is an exception! If a redirection symbol is not quoted, quotation around the symbol is observed, but is not removed. So, since variable expansion also comes after setting up redirections, and no exceptions are described here in the man page, getting the name of a file from a variable and using it as a target should not work, right? No: redirection does not actually take place when the symbols are being read, the symbols are merely removed and are noted for later, right before when the actual command runs. Apart from 5 types of quotation, there are basically 2 quoting phases, 2 word splitting phases (with only one being controllable), and a tokenization phase on top of that. If you have a command, it could be an alias, a special built in, a non-special built in, a symbolic link to a file, a regular file, a function, with different rules regarding how they can be overridden, if redirection happens before or after arguments have been passed (what does "time my_command 2>&1 >log_file" do?), etc. This list is admittedly long, but it doesn't even scratch the surface of the bloat, complexity and inconsistencies of Bash. See More

Top Pro

Variables and aliases are listed the way they are built

alias and set will list aliases and variables in a format that can be run directly with no modifications. Even if the values contain \n. This is handy if you want to modify a value. See More

ArticulateTaweret's Experience

It can do anything. See More

Top Con

Lags behind on features compared to ZSH and Fish

People who wants power features or to customize their shell experience use zsh or fish. See More

Top Pro

Rich built-in features

By default, there are many built-in features. They make really complex and reliable programs possible. In comparison to dash, for example, you can do the same tasks in less time and fewer lines of code. See More

Top Con

No out-of-the-box command autocompletion

To have command autocompletion in bash you need to install third-party plug-ins. See More

Top Pro

Rich scripting capabilities

BASH scripting is a rich and robust language. See More

Top Pro

Rich scripting capabilities on a single line

Want to run something 5 times? Write a throw-away loop: for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do date; done If you need it 100 times? Not a problem: for i in {1..100}; do date; done or: for ((i=0; i<100; ++i)); do date; done How about emailing yourself when remote server is back online? Sure thing: while ! ping -c1 example.com &>/dev/null; do date; sleep 5; done && mailx -s 'server is back!' me@myself.com See More

Top Pro

Plenty of examples and tutorials

Since this is very mature shell there is a lot of great examples and other resources describing how to do almost everything. See More

Top Pro

Default shell on most systems

Bash is the default shell on virtually every UNIX system. Making it very portable across different systems and once you get used to it, you can use it everywhere. See More

See All

Launchy

Top Con

Abandoned

Launchy was last updated in 2010. See More

Top Pro

.deb files available for Debian based distros

For those using Debian based distros Launchy is very easy to install as their website has 32 and 64bit .deb files available. For all other diistros Launchy will have to be compiled from source. See More

Top Con

Small selection of plugins

The official plugin page on Launchy's homepage hosts just 11 plugins. See More

Top Pro

Easily themed with many available on the web

Launchy can be easily themedby placing themes into the Launchy theme folder and then selecting that theme from within the apps settings. There are also many user created themes available which is great for those that want their launcher to match the rest of their OS's theme. See More

See All

Cairo-Dock

Top Pro

Easy to tweak and make your own themes

Drag and drop, change icons, use effects, etc. It's fun to play with. It's not a basic dock program and the GUI is good. See More

Top Con

Poor/No system theme or icon integration

Docks use their own theme, own theme colors, icons, layout's and theme engines. See More

Top Pro

Cairo-Dock session

Users can choose to launch a stand alone Cairo-Dock session where the dock also serves as a taskbar where all apps are launchable such as in any other DE session. There is a composited version and one without. See More

Top Con

Hard/Underwhelming to configure

Cairo dock proposes a feature rich tool, tweakable to any degree. The configuration menus are at times inappropriate, shallow and uninteresting, complex to navigate, and prefab-centric. Rarely offering a satisfying preset, and always unsatisfying to tweak. See More

Top Pro

Popular and usually found and installed from a distros repo

Due to the popularity and how long Cairo-Dock has been around it is more often than not found in a distros repos, which is very convenient to get the app installed. See More

Top Con

Can be heavy on resources for weaker systems

Cairo-Dock is more on the heavy side when compared to other docks, which is something to keep in mind for those that are on low resource systems. See More

Top Pro

Easily themed

Cairo-Dock has built in settings to install and use themes for the dock and icons. Definitely more robust in this are than most other docks available for Linux. See More

See All

Nalanga URL Shortener

Top Pro

All data can be exported

ThriftyAnu's Experience

It is simple to use See More

Top Pro

Unlimited Custom Splash Pages are also enabled

PowerfulArgestes's Experience

They offer great features in their free version only, and UI is amazing See More

Top Pro

Device Targeting is also enabled

OrganizedCopacati's Experience

I was searching URL shortener then came across with this and it won my heart See More

Top Pro

Geotargeting is also enabled

See All

I Recommend...

Built By the Slant team

Find the best product instantly.

Lustre recommends the best products at their lowest prices – right on Amazon.

4.7 star rating

Add to Chrome

Try it now - it's free

score 93 · Accepted Answer

Rofi

Top Pro

Customisable

Top Con

One of the most poorly documented launchers for new users

Challenge: Install Rofi and google how to actually start or use it. I'll wait. Sure, there's plenty of Arch bros screaming about dmenu, showing off editing of config files, integrating it with i3 or this or that... uh... guys? how. do. we. actually: 1) start the damn thing. 2) use the damn thing. I was intrigued because Rofi was ranked #1 on slant, which hasn't done me wrong so far with reviews. But I'm about to go back to using a third party dock in Xfce, because there's simply no resource on how to use Rofi for a complete newbie. See More

David Aslan French's Experience

Rofi is powerful but if you're looking for a Launcher like Alfred, which is clean and simple looking, with very little text, then rofi is not for you. Everything is a whole lot more compressed and claustrophobic feeling. See More

Specs

File Size:529KiB

Publisher:Dave Davenport

System resource usage:Low

Top Pro

Can run commands

e.g.: <code>run: st toxic</code> Runs a tox client in the terminal emulator "st". <code>run: maim ~/Images/screenshots</code> take a screenshot with "maim" and save it to given location. See More

Top Con

Zero images

This is a pro for some but it's a con for others. See More

Top Pro

Simple

Top Con

Compressed visual design

Much busier looking, less spacing or white space compared to similar apps. See More

Top Pro

Minimalist design, yet can use customizable themes

Also it's easy to make use of your own "plugin" (scripts). See More

Top Con

Issues when Caps Lock is active

When typing with Caps Lock activated, it's impossible to use Backspace. Rofi eventually freezes in this scenario. See More

Top Pro

Clipboard history extension

Greenclip adds clipboard manager functionality. See More

Top Pro

Case insensitive

Instead of having to worry about case sensitive characters, you can use caps or lowercase wherever you please without causing any issues. See More

Top Pro

Great keybindings

They seem to be emacs based. See More

Top Pro

Resource efficient

Top Pro

Greatly maintained

Top Pro

Easily switch windows without mouse

See All

Built by Slant

Find the best product
instantly.

Stop wasting time searching endlessly. Lustre recommends the best products at their lowest prices – right on Amazon.

4.7 star rating

Add to Chrome - It's Free Try now - it's free

The Best 1 of 28 OptionsWhy?

My Recommendation for Rofi

My Recommendation for Rofi

Customisable

One of the most poorly documented launchers for new users

Can run commands

Zero images

Simple

Compressed visual design

Minimalist design, yet can use customizable themes

Issues when Caps Lock is active

Clipboard history extension

Case insensitive

Great keybindings

Resource efficient

Greatly maintained

Easily switch windows without mouse

27 Other Options Considered

My Recommendation for Dmenu

My Recommendation for Dmenu

Blazing fast

Keyboard-centric

Fast / low resource consumption

Suckless

Visually customizable

Extensible / Scriptable

Highly usable in scripting, piping.

My Recommendation for Ulauncher

My Recommendation for Ulauncher

Simple

Uses Electron (html/css/js)

Fast

Pretty slow

Supports extensions in Python

Allows custom shortcuts

Themeable

Supports fuzzy search

Extensions are really easy to write by yourself

Able to launch Kdialog, Zenity and Bash scripts

My Recommendation for Albert

My Recommendation for Albert

Blazingly fast and lightweight

Keyboard navigation is not customizeable

Support for plugins

Plugins are centrally managed

Visual appearance customizable

Settings are complex

Free and open source

Dictionary lookup plugin

Scriptable/Functionality customizable

Plugins doesn't require keywords

My Recommendation for Docky

My Recommendation for Docky

Drag and drop apps to the dock

Removing Docky icon is not as easy as it should be

Many themes

Highly Customisable.

Plugin Docklets

Panel mode

My Recommendation for Xfce Whisker Menu

My Recommendation for Xfce Whisker Menu

The most simple and convenient app launcher on my experience

Will not support file search

Built into Xfce desktop environment

My Recommendation for Synapse

My Recommendation for Synapse

Rock solid

Unable to search whole system

Can run commands just as a terminal would

Bound to control+space

Zeitgeist powered

Includes a Zeal plugin

My Recommendation for Plank

My Recommendation for Plank

Simple and minimal

No UI for settings

Third party themer available

Poor workplace awareness (cycling windows)

Solid and lightweight

No right click menu for some apps outside of elementary OS