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davatorium
rofi
C2017–2025
davatorium / rofi

rofi

Rofi: A window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement

Systems & Infrastructure
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
23Distinct people
26Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
16.5KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Rofi: A window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 4:00:59 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year26 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2017-10-05 05:01:28 UTC to 2025-10-12 16:31:20 UTC.

02462017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments20172018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

What Hacker News says

3 sources
michaelmrose·Oct 15, 2018
You can create your own desktop files if you like and shove them in ~/.local/share/applications if you want the app to show up when you list apps instead of binaries. Example when you launch i3-dmenu-desktop instead of dmenu_run. As an aside I suggest you check out rofi. Its a better looking, more featureful alternative to dmenu. Compared to dmenu it offers -Themes -The option to show as a window in the middle of the screen or dmenu style at the bottom/top -Optional icons -slightly faster at showing apps vs binaries compared to i3-dmenu-desktop -Configurable hotkeys -The ability to launch a typed command in a terminal with a hotkey -The ability to launch a typed command as is or complete from a history much like a shell history. Example I have it set to run as is with Enter or complete first choice for history with control+Enter -A built
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in tool to list/switch windows, select from a list of applications like i3-dmenu-desktop, list available ssh connections https://github.com/DaveDavenport/rofi
In Snap, Flatpak and AppImage, package formats compared
BlackLotus89·Mar 18, 2018
Interesting that nobody seems to talk about the software itself and maybe it's alternatives. I for once welcome the concept of something like Finda and am looking for alternatives for me. > Finda finds things — windows, browser tabs, code editor buffers, browser history, apps, files, etc. Finda looks and acts like a normal launcher. The concept isn't new, but fast good launchers are rare. When we look at the Finda-Page (I didn't download the demo since I don't use Mac OS) we can conjecture how it works and there are a few things that bother me. It seems to always run in the background and listen for inputs. It's cross platform so it will probably have it's own file indexer. This all seems to add up to a rather large memory consumption. Anyway right now I'm still using the dmenu [1] launcher and am looking at many alternatives, most of whi
Read the rest
ch haven't been updated in some time. First the ones that haven't been updated in some time dmenu2 [2], interrobang [3], and lighthouse [4]. All nice launcher, but here comes my current favourite rofi [5]. Not only is it an active project, but it defines itself as window switcher and launcher (so what finda kinda does). Combined with it's extendable nature it seems to be a solid launcher. Bookmark functionality is for instance given with the buku [6] integration. But I'm still looking for the best solution. Here is the feature list I'm looking for: program launcher, simple calculator (through bc or python), file locator (maybe through locate), bookmark manager (firefox preferably). Other things like quick (online) search, clipboard management or the whole slew of other features provided Finda and panther and whatnot would just be extra. Does anyone of you have a nice lightweight solution? [1] https://github.com/stilvoid/dmenu [2] https://github.com/muff1nman/dmenu2 [3] https://github.com/TrilbyWhite/interrobang [4] https://github.com/emgram769/lighthouse [5] https://github.com/DaveDavenport/rofi [6] https://github.com/jarun/Buku/ - bl
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