Ulauncher

What's Changed

Features

• Close window instead of hiding by @friday in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1382
• Make the --dev CLI flag also set verbose login by @friday in 2c79548d

Fixes

• Fix issue with Ulauncher not closing after launching app by @friday in 3efdc942 (hopefully for the last time, see #1381)
• Don't link D-BUS service to the systemd service (for distros without systemd) by @friday in 4e7f342e

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/v6.0.0-beta10...v6.0.0-beta11

What's Changed

Fixes

• Fix launcher stays open after starting some apps by @friday in a94876f9
• Hopefully fix detection for environments without a compositor to avoid black borders (but if not, we at least log more details now to make it easier to debug) by @friday in 9dd3448d

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/v6.0.0-beta9...v6.0.0-beta10

What's Changed

Features

• Generate manpage for the main ulauncher command by @friday in e07fee20

Fixes

• Fix infinite loop if extension crashes during install by @friday in 3c5fde4b
• Reset extension errors after updating extension by @friday in 9b5df1b7
• Make sure to wait for status after extension install/update by @friday in 86b6e021

Other

• make run development command will now try to close running Uluncher instances before starting by @friday in 6514c0c8

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/v6.0.0-beta8...v6.0.0-beta9

What's Changed

• Fixed issue caused by the optimization in previous release causing apps to appear multiple times

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/v6.0.0-beta7...v6.0.0-beta8

What's Changed

Lots of refactoring, that I won't mention in detail.

• Fix keywordless triggers (new feature introduced in v6 that only one extension experimentally uses yet) by @friday in e8b24742
• Fix description for shortcuts without arguments by @friday in 5742f1e1
• Fix returning action from on_item_enter by @friday in 89310ceb
• Clarify the shortcut edit mode descriptions and UI by @friday in cc5b90b6
• Support both webkit2-4.1 (default) and webkit2-4.0 for Ubuntu/Debian by @friday in b32b0983
• Avoid needlessly refreshing triggers for every keystroke (for better performance) by @friday in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1379
• Added a global eventbus to avoid circular dependencies by @friday in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1378

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/v6.0.0-beta6...v6.0.0-beta7

What's Changed

• Improved error message if failing to load extension manifest
• Updated troubleshooting links

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/5.15.6...5.15.7

What's Changed

• fix: fixed extension installation trying to access path before setting it @friday in 33735b32
• feat: add setting for window width by @friday in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1372
• feat: add copy hook by @friday in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1371
• build: migrate setuptools setup.cfg to pyproject.toml (PEP 517) by @friday in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1362
• refactor: replace wnck with ewmh by @friday in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1363

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/v6.0.0-beta5...v6.0.0-beta6

What's Changed

The changes in this release has mainly been about refactoring and build changes that won't affect normal use, but that are great for working with the app.

This release was initially named v6.0.0-b5 to comply with python versioning standards, but this didn't work for Launchpad (the Debian PPA service), so the name was changed back to the old format "v6.0.0-beta5"

Fixes

• Detach subprocesses (so they don't die when/if Ulauncher is killed) by @troycurtisjr and @friday in #1360, #1358
• Do not clear GDK_BACKEND=wayland by @nazarewk in #1318
• Fix Ubuntu 24.04 dependencies (hopefully) by making python3-levenshtein optional by @friday in 28d58675311522ea32e582551e158b537ce9c4b4

Feat

• Support for loading extensions from XDG_DATA_DIRS (not managed by Ulauncher) by @nazarewk
• Reload the theme every time you show the ulauncher window by @friday in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1342
• Support loading app indicator icon even if app not installed by @friday in b8ba4abd
• Replace preferences dropdown with dedicated buttons by @friday in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1327

Other

• Nix build support, contributed by @nazarewk in #1307, #1316, #1317, #1326, #1344
• Major extension classes refactoring by @friday in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1330
• Rewrite ResultWidget not to use Glade by @friday in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1341
• Build script improvements in by @friday (mainly #1338, #1313)
• Install icons in standardized hicolor/scalable paths by @friday in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/commit/1b71d2cb7db2dd12151dbe93c4c5a3a5b9ff7dcb

New Contributors

• @nazarewk made their first contribution in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1317

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/v6.0.0-beta4...v6.0.0-beta5

What's Changed

Fixes

• Run shortcut scripts in a separate thread since they can block the main thread otherwise (like pkexec) #1299
• Fixed the small result "item" having no ellipsize mode (making it grow the window with long texts) f0fcafd7
• Tuning to the new highlighting implementation to ellipsize more aggressively (to avoid growing the window). 77a4f94e
• Add fallback action to do nothing if the extension result has no action 4955e1dd.
• Calc mode error with queries with a function syntax but numbers instead of a function name (like 10(5)) 95550f18

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/v6.0.0-beta3...v6.0.0-beta4

What's Changed

Features & enhancements

• Rewrote search highlighting to fix html entities handling, improve ellipsis handling and enable theme simplifications #1293
• support simplified themes #1303
• Simplified error types for crashed extensions f815f1cd

Fixes

• Disable webgl for Preferences view 8d955a67
• Unescape html entities in search results e62850e0
• Window shifting on double and triple clicks #1298
• Extensions run status always appearing positive after install due to not waiting long enough 4d7cdfaa
• Invalid paths requested when debugging Preferences 4ed91aca
• Restore extension result getter methods in case they are used by the extension 81f92e2f

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/v6.0.0-beta2...v6.0.0-beta3

What's Changed

Fixes

• Added compatibility for icons when default shortcuts are generated in Ulauncher v6
• Invalid paths when debugging preferences source maps

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/5.15.5...5.15.6

What's Changed

Fixes

• Changed Preferences web view flags for better performance and compatibility (might fix issue opening Preferences with Nvidia drivers)
• Avoid crash if a shortcut doesn't have an icon
• Extensions run status always appearing positive directly after install even if they fail to run (#1301)

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/5.15.4...5.15.5

What's Changed

• fix: changed Preferenced webview flags for better performance and compatibility
• fix: avoid crash if a shortcut doesn't have an icon

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/5.15.4...5.15.5-beta1

What's Changed

Features & enhancements

• Allow users to disable extension by @Laurens256 in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1292
• Updated .deb dependencies to make Wnck optional, and added gtk layer shell (also optional)

Fixes

• Update ulauncher-toggle script to comply with POSIX sh by @nathan818fr in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1291
• The new hotkey setter failed to detect Gnome desktop on Ubuntu

New Contributors

• @Laurens256 made their first contribution in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1287
• @nathan818fr made their first contribution in https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/pull/1291

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/v6.0.0-beta1...v6.0.0-beta2

What's Changed

Ulauncher V6 has been an ongoing refactoring branch for 2 years. Most of the changes are internal code changes, bug fixes, security or performance enhancements, and a lot of architectural changes. To read more about the details see our tracking issue: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/issues/869

We have made many Extension API improvements to make it easier to write extensions with less code, but we left them out of these notes because we still have to document, write migration guides and update our extensions site before we recommend extension developers to upgrade their extensions.

Breaking changes

• Dropped support for Python versions older than 3.7.
• Dropped support for GTK+ versions older than 3.22.
• Replaced the previous hotkey binding library (X11 only) with custom desktop environment wrappers for Gnome, Elementary and Budige, XFCE and KDE/Plasma, and instructions in the preferences window for other desktops. #1256 fa16d93d8fef5b7b16194d1d856085184c0f24f3 4570ba473b155772bfd42446847d60525373a1f4
• Changed the functionality of the "jump keys" to select, but not launch the item (#965)
• "Launch at Login" is now re-implemented using systemd instead of XDG autostart (#808)
  • The --hide-window CLI option is now renamed to --no-window. --hide-window is now an invalid option that will cause Ulauncher not to start. This is so that old XDG autostart files won't be conflicting with the new implementation (6f39063).
• Removed "Blacklisted Apps Dirs" feature. This was previously needed mostly for performance reasons because we were monitoring desktop application entries (we we no longer need to do that as of #834). Let us know though if you find after having tested Ulauncher v6, that you still need this setting.

Ulauncher application changes

• Ulauncher is now a implemented as a dbus activatable single instance (SingleMainWindow) GTK.Application instead of separate windows and DBus listeners, and as a result of this ulauncher-toggle is just a wrapper around gapplication launch io.ulauncher.Ulauncher (#988, #1164, d90b89fca336efa3c265d6b051da46a2a014fd2b and many more)
  • These changes fixes the issues with focus stealing that previously required an workaround that only worked for X11 and was still unreliable #1128
  • This in turn also changed the ulauncher-toggle command to always activate the window, rather then actually toggling it.
• The fuzzy search logic and the highlighter is now rewritten to use a new internal method to get matching blocks (using python-Levenstein), which is both faster and much better than before (#827 and de1cd32).
  • We now also strip accents (diacritics) before fuzzy searching (#855)
  • Search now also includes the app description (a.k.a the "comment" field in the desktop entry files) (#938) and keywords (#1012)
  • Results are also slightly weighted by launch count, to favor your commonly launched apps #1175
• Ulauncher now uses the GTK APIs to fetch the desktop apps, instead of handling this ourselves on a low level. This allowed us to simplify our logic and remove 1.5+K lines of code, one dependency, one runtime process, and many sources of bugs (#835).
• Ulauncher now uses Unix sockets instead of Websockets to communicate with extensions (#822). This rewrite is a major improvement for performance and security, and it's fully backward compatible.
• Ulauncher now support wlr-layer-shell protocol to allows positioning and displaying over fullscreen windows #1172
• We now auto-detect and handle desktops without a compositor cases without needing the "--no-window-shadow" CLI flag. If you still get the black borders issue please let us know though. See #1149 and #1235 for details.
• We have replaced all our usage of pickle with JSON (safer, faster and more consistent). #849 #1240
• Configuration files have been moved. We now adopted the new [XDG_STATE_HOME(https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ny34vs/new_xdg_state_home_in_xdg_base_directory_spec/) spec (#846). Note that Ulauncher v6 will migrate your old configuration files the first time you launch it, so this is not a breaking change.
• Script shortcuts now support %s to access the argument, which means if you use %s in your shell scripts code and don't want this you have to change to something else (like using f-strings in python) (#389)
• Added support (X11 only) to raise the app if it's already running and has a window, instead of launching a new one (#979)
• The result view now supports scrolling if the amount of items is higher than the window height allows (#968)
• Ulauncher now uses your icon theme for the media icons instead of supplying it's own icons (#806).
• Ulauncher's Preferences behaves like a standard GTK window that has a header bar that you can drag it with, resize, maximize etc (#998). It is still a web view inside though.
• The calculator mode got several improvements.
  • Formats the output according to the locale (#937)
  • Improve the partial query handling and round the output to at most 15 decimals (#1014)
  • Support trigonometric functions and constants (#1015)
  • Support modulus (#999)
• Added setting to customize the jump keys and included Alt+0 in the defaults (#964 and #950)
• The optional app indicator (tray icon) now supports activating the launcher with a middle click #1069, or left click if you install a recent version of XApp #1075
• Ulauncher can now take an optional argument to set the Ulauncher query
  gapplication action io.ulauncher.Ulauncher set-query "'hello'"
• For Gnome Desktop users, the settings (ex "Sound" are now included by default as apps, providing the same functionality as the extension ulauncher-gnome-settings does, but without needing an extension (3601dfd).
• You can now move the Ulauncher window by dragging it (#957)

• Fixed security vulnerability by allowing only local websocket clients

What's Changed

• Fix bad assumption removing all .desktop from application ids instead of just the file extension (should fix Telegram app not launching)

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/5.15.2...5.15.3

What's Changed

• Fix crash caused by broken/non-standard icon sets (#1209)
• Migrated our releases from Travis (no longer functional) to GitHub actions. Apologies for the inconvenience for those who subscribed to new releases and got notifications in our testing phase (which is now over).

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/5.15.1...5.15.2

What's Changed

Fixes

• If the users configuration or statistics files are corrupted, ignore/overwrite them to prevent Ulauncher from failing to launch.
• Prevent zstd from being used in deb packages (needed for compatibility with Debian)
• Added wmctrl to the Ubuntu dependencies (it's not required, but used when you use ulauncher-toggle instead of the hotkey settings)
• Updated the links in the help tab in the settings window.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/5.15.0...5.15.1

What's Changed

Fixes

• Ulauncher will no longer assume the default extension branch is named "master" (e5455843ffaef44e1698400dddff959ae83d6f39 and b33a71bc3802a1c519cdd28b487d1d51c5266b6c)
• Prevent Ulauncher crashing if installing themes or extensions with invalid json manifests (#1103 and c7d428f9a5fe5466b8090218d4644cac497bfd1e)
• Fix floating point errors for the calculator (acc1b74d866bbe62329b3cff4ea7cb4df81a3a1f) (backported from v6 branch)

Features and improvements

• Improved extension installation error handling and added instructions for how to install extension manually, if the network isn't working (306771c3860ec320f630486261dbbbe26075d314)
• Added keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Comma to show preferences (a8bf53ada544bdd209ba578d045bb4f7a9426371) (backported from v6 branch)
• Treat both comma and dot as decimal separators for calc mode (b243dd00a97cffff803f64d127f46e9fde9b13d1) (backported from v6 branch)
• Simplified the documentation for the API version specifier since we will abandon the complicated semver implementation for next release (6d235be07ee1d7ff5899c44bc8b37e99c9b84a03) (this has to be updated manually to the documentation host)

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Ulauncher/Ulauncher/compare/5.14.7...5.15.0