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Redsandro
Asked: 2012-05-18 14:18:47 +0800 CST

Is there a shell-independent HUD-like menu search tool for Xfce/GNOME/Cinnamon?

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The Ubuntu Heads-Up Display (HUD) - you love it or you hate it. Personally I rather like a classic desktop, so I use Xfce or GNOME-fork Cinnamon, and I'd like to keep those menu's where they are.

But the HUD is pretty awesome when your menus are complex and you forgot where an option sits. This makes that search trick very interesting.

I know the HUD is Unity specific. I am looking for a HUD-like tool to complement the menu in shells other than Unity.

There is Appmenu Runner for KDE that does this. There is also appmenu-qt for KDE.

Problem with the above is that it uses KDE libs, and it only works for KDE apps.

This is Linux, there aught to be something like this for GNOME/GTK apps, right?

Looking for any tool that can search the menus. I already use(d) Synapse, Kupfer and GNOME Do, but those are simply app-launchers (with some tricks). Something like that would suffice if only they included searching the menus for the currently focused application.

The HUD allows users to activate menu items by typing part of the name. It uses a fuzzy search algorithm that will highlight partial matches. It can match menu items that are multiple layers deep in an application's menu hierarchy. The feature, which replaces traditional menu accelerators, is activated by pressing the alt key.

Similar questions:

gnome software-recommendation appmenu cinnamon hud

5 Answers

  1. I prefer Synapse over Gnome-Do.

    It seems that there is some discussion about bringing this feature to Synapse.

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  2. There's qmenu_hud: https://github.com/tetzank/qmenu_hud

    It just retrieves the menu entries over dbus and displays them in dmenu.

    You still have to get your applications, or rather the toolkit they are using, to export their menu entries to dbus. This is easily done with appmenu-qt for KDE and Qt applications. I'm not sure but i think you need a patched version of gtk to get appmenu enabled there. I guess Ubuntu ships patched gtk packages by default for Unity.

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  3. Have a look at Plotinus. It is shell independent, but it works only with applications that use the GTK+ 3 toolkit. (I hope that will satisfy.)

    enter image description here

    From the github README:

    Have you used Sublime Text's or Atom's "Command Palette"? It's a list of everything those editors can do that opens at the press of a key and finds the action you are looking for just by typing a few letters...

    Plotinus brings that power to every application on your system (that is, to those that use the GTK+ 3 toolkit). It automatically extracts all available commands by introspecting a running application, instantly adapting to UI changes and showing only relevant actions...

    Just press Ctrl+Shift+P (configurable) and you're in business...

    About shell-dependent solutions

    I realize the OP asked about sell-independent solutions, but for thoroughness, let me say:

    1. howtogeek said (2017-10-29) "With the switch to the GNOME Shell environment, nothing like the HUD is available, even as an extension."
    2. There actually is a gnome shell extension for the HUD. Update: here is the current version. (The old version's recent reviews are negative, and some of the positive reviews point out that it doesn't work in Ubuntu 17.10.)
    3. Mate (desktop environment) offers a HUD: "A favourite of Unity 7 users is the Heads-Up Display (HUD) which provides a way to search for and run menu-bar commands without your fingers ever leaving the keyboard."
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  4. I would recommend:

    • Awesome-wm
    • Conky

    See Conky HUD to see how you can "use awesome to turn Conky into a heads-up display (HUD) of sorts". (Although I'm not sure that this answers the original question.)

    Also have a look here: http://www.tuxradar.com/content/best-linux-desktop-search-tools

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  5. The following two applications are nominally part of Xfce, but can readily be used in the DE of your choice.

    The panel plug-in solution below, however, is not desktop-independent and requires the use of xfce4-panel. But since you are using Xfce and are looking for similar functionality in the Gtk world, the following could help.

    • xfce4-whiskermenu: "Whisker Menu is an alternate application launcher for Xfce. [..] If you’re not sure exactly where a program is listed, instead of browsing through each category you can simply enter a search term. The search field is focused when opening the menu, so you can just start typing."

      Whisker Menu

    In addition, check How can I have a dash-like search under Xfce? for a similar question with relevant answers.

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