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Add to SafariWhen comparing Ulauncher vs Rofi, the Slant community recommends Rofi for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux app launchers?” Rofi is ranked 1st while Ulauncher is ranked 2nd.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Simple
Ulauncher comes with very reasonable defaults, looks good and just works.
Pro Themeable
ULauncher supports themes and comes with a good supply on install but more can also be made.
Pro Fast
Pro Supports fuzzy search
You can enter app name with a typo and Ulauncher will still be able to find it.
Pro Allows custom shortcuts
Pro Actively maintained
Unlike Albert or others, it is actually being maintained.
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.
Pro Direct plugin install from GitHub
Can fork, customize, and install instantly.
Pro Good extension ecosystem
Pro Good look
Ulauncher looks modern & can be customized with many themes.
Pro Extensions are really easy to write by yourself
Pro Able to launch Kdialog, Zenity and Bash scripts
Extensions are easily created. Python script is all open to see. Not compiled like some.
Pro Customisable
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 Simple
Pro Minimalist design, yet can use customizable themes
Also it's easy to make use of your own "plugin" (scripts).
Pro Great keybindings
They seem to be emacs based.
Pro Resource efficient
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 Clipboard history extension
Greenclip adds clipboard manager functionality.
Pro Greatly maintained
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. On the negative side this means it can launch slower (depending on your environment and setrtings).
Pro Easily switch windows without mouse
Cons
Con Needs more posibilities for extensions
Currently, extensions can run only when you type their alias and <space>. There is no way to see results from multiple extensions at once. The output is also limited just to rows.
Con Pretty slow
Launches with a delay.
Con Does not easily fit into a customized desktop without full GTK3 CSD support
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 Issues when Caps Lock is active
When typing with Caps Lock activated, it's impossible to use Backspace. Rofi eventually freezes in this scenario.
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 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 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
For example the calc mode/plugin will output the result to stdout by default, while the emoji mode/plugin will add it to the clipboard, and there's no good way for plugins to add additional config option. The plugins can check your CLI arguments, but you can't put those in your config instead to make them persist in a convenient manner, so you have to pass them as arguments every time, and multiple plugins could implement the same cli argument to mean different things.
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