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

Question

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:

+1 I'd like to see something similar to the HUD for other GTK based Desktops, but not in the in-your-face kind of way as it is now, and such a thing that worked as a plugin for Synapse, Kupfer and Gnome do would be awesome. — Uri Herrera, May 17 '12 at 22:40
It should be possible to build a desktop-independent app for the HUD. It runs as a DBus service on Ubuntu, so someone "just" needs to write a nice UI to query it. — James, Jun 09 '12 at 03:25
So maybe a Gnome-Do plugin querying the DBus service would be an interesting goal for some developer. :) — Redsandro, Jun 11 '12 at 20:53
I am really searching to find an answer to this, as the HUD is the most powerful tool I have seen in Unity, so I would like an answer for this as well. I have reached the same conclusions, through searches as you. Did you also try lfhck? I see a similar post there. Jeez dude you tried everywhere didn't you? See almost exact posts all over for this. I am thinking that you hit a wall. I'll try to hit a deep search on this one. — No Time, Apr 18 '14 at 05:14

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 04 '14 at 20:43

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I prefer Synapse over Gnome-Do.

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

answered Feb 04 '14 at 20:43

earthmeLon

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However there seems to be not much progress with this feature – student Feb 05 '14 at 17:40
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Alike the response from Landroni hereunder, this response is not about an HUD equivalent in Gnome. Synapse of Gnome-Do are application/files finders (Dash equivalent) but do not allow to find command within a running application. – vmalep Mar 29 '17 at 02:21

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 24 '14 at 09:31

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.

https://github.com/jamcnaughton/hud-menu seems promising; haven't tried it yet. — sondra.kinsey, Sep 30 '17 at 22:37

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

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.)

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:

howtogeek said (2017-10-29) "With the switch to the GNOME Shell environment, nothing like the HUD is available, even as an extension."
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.)
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."

score -2 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 11 '14 at 08:26

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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

edited Feb 11 '14 at 08:26

landroni

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answered Oct 02 '12 at 16:09

knope

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Some instructions on how to duplicate the HUD's functionality would certainly be helpful. Also, the link only appears to include utilities for searching files instead of menus. – Knowledge Cube Oct 26 '12 at 20:27
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Is it possible to get the list of commands from conky using a command-line interface? – Anderson Green Nov 13 '12 at 17:40

score -3 · Answer 5 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

-3

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

xfce4-appfinder: The Application Finder in Xfce.
xfdashboard: "Maybe a Gnome shell like dashboard for Xfce"

It comes with extensive documentation and screenshots.

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."

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

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

Community

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answered Feb 04 '14 at 21:13

landroni

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The question is not about how to find and start applications but how to access the menu bar entries of a given application using the keyboard like in HUD. – student Feb 05 '14 at 14:49
Then please rephrase the original question to make it clear. As it is, it is not. Basically, what is HUD? – landroni Feb 05 '14 at 16:21
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HUD – Heads UP Display – uses an intelligent search-based approach to finding and accessing menu items you need. It’s smart too; HUD is capable of remembering what items you use most often and prioritising them in the results. Here is a video showing this feature in the example of gimp. Here is an overview: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/01/hud-new-unity-feature Now we want something like this which is not tied to unity, which you can use in gnome or other window managers. – student Feb 05 '14 at 17:36
Until unity 2d was dropped this was possible even with HUD itself (http://askubuntu.com/questions/202117/xmonad-with-unity-hud) – student Feb 05 '14 at 17:39
Useful comments. Please edit the original question to reflect this. – landroni Feb 05 '14 at 17:45
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Wouldn't this not be a bit impolite since it is not my own question? If not I will do it. – student Feb 05 '14 at 17:47
I don't think so. The edit button is there for a reason, and for all to use. If the edit that you propose is out of line, it will be rejected by the reviewers; and that's fine. But if your proposal genuinely improves the question, as I think is the case here (a screenshot would be useful!), then I see no reason not to proceed. – landroni Feb 05 '14 at 18:04

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

5 Answers5

About shell-dependent solutions

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