When comparing Synapse vs Rofi, the Slant community recommends Rofi for most people. In the question“What are the best app launchers for UNIX-like systems?” Rofi is ranked 1st while Synapse is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Rofi is:
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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Rock solid
Synapse is pretty rock solid. Works as expected and launches applications fast.
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.
Pro Zeitgeist powered
Synapse searches the Zeitgeist log, which tends to be a pretty quick way to do searches over other app launchers.
Pro Includes a Zeal plugin
Includes a Zeal plugin to make searching faster.
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.
Pro Minimalist design, yet can use customizable themes
Also it's easy to make use of your own "plugin" (scripts).
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.
Pro Customisable
Pro Great keybindings
They seem to be emacs based.
Pro Resource efficient
Pro Simple
Pro No resource usage when you're not using it
Other launchers often run in the background to be prepared for showing the launcher. Rofi doesn't do this.
Pro Clipboard history extension
Greenclip adds clipboard manager functionality.
Pro Greatly maintained
Pro Easily switch windows without mouse
Cons
Con Synapse is an abandoned project
The latest release was 7 years ago and the Launchpad page is a ghost town
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.
Con Bound to control+space
Due to this it interferes with common IDE layouts for recommendations. Modifying hotkeys file doesn't adjust this.
Con One of the most poorly documented launchers for new users
Challenge:
Install Rofi and google how to actually start or use it. Sure, there's plenty of Arch users screaming about dmenu, showing off editing of config files, integrating it with i3 or this or that, but how do we actually:
1) Start it.
2) Use it.
Rofi seemed intriguing, because it was ranked #1 on slant, but it may be better to use a third party dock in Xfce, because there's simply no resource on how to use Rofi for a complete newbie.
Con Lacks a default "blank slate" launch behavior
Unlike Ulauncher, Albert and similar launcher there's no generic "enable everything" launch behavior. You can configure Rofi to do almost this, but it's whitelist based, so you'd have to reconfigure it if you install or uninstall a plugin, and Rofi has to know if the plugin should be part of the combi mode or treated as an isolated mode.
Con Lacks conventions for plugins
Some other launchers have stricter plugin/extension APIs, making the plugin behavior more consistent.
For example plugins in Rofi respond to your choice differently (at least by default). Some output the result to stdout (like the calc mode) and others add the result to the clipboard (the emoji mode/plugin). And there's no API for plugins to add their own config option. They can check your CLI arguments, but that's not a perfect solution as different plugins could implement the same argument to mean different things.
Con Lacks keywords to switch between modes
You can switch between modes with ctrl+tab by default, but if you have a lot of modes this is slow.
Con Issues on Wayland
If you use Wayland, then Rofi may fail to grab keypresses or inputs, or may fail altogether. Works fine if you switch to X11.
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.
