zunder · v0.2.6 · MIT

What it is

zunder runs as a small daemon. A keybind sends it a word over a unix socket, and it puts an overlay on top of everything: one prompt, results grouped in sections, monospace, colored app icons.

Open windows, apps, a calculator, a world clock, clipboard history, shell commands, power actions and your own scripts all live in the same list. ALT+TAB shows a live screenshot of each window, even ones on other workspaces.

Features

Window switcher

ALT+TAB as a grid of live window thumbnails, from any workspace.

App launcher

Every .desktop app, flatpak too, fuzzy matched on name, keywords and binary.

Start screen

Favorites, open windows, your most used apps. Never empty.

Favorites

Ctrl+F pins any result to the start screen.

Global shortcuts

Ctrl+B gives any result a system-wide Hyprland keybind.

History

history lists everything you ever launched. It is never cleared.

World clock

time in ny, time in 2h in tokyo, 3pm ny in zurich.

Calculator

2^10/3, sqrt(2)*pi. Enter copies the result.

Conversion

5 km in mi, 30c, 100 usd in chf. Units and 160 currencies.

Files

Files from your home folder appear as you type. Images get a preview.

Clipboard

clip searches your cliphist history, text and images.

Emoji

fire already shows 🔥. :heart opens the picker.

Shell

> cmd runs in your terminal or in the background.

System

Lock, suspend, reboot, shut down, log out.

Plugins

Any executable that prints lines, in any language.

Themes

12 built in, or your own file of nine colors.

How it works

keybind ─► zunder switch ─► $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/zunder.sock ─► daemon
                                                              │
                     hyprctl clients -j ◄─────────────────────┤ on open
                     .desktop files     ◄─────────────────────┤
                     grim -T <window>   ◄─────────────────────┘ ALT+TAB only, in threads

1. The daemon stays loaded. GTK and the app index are kept in memory, so the CLI only has to write one word to a socket. Opening is a matter of milliseconds.
2. The overlay is a layer-shell surface. It covers the whole screen with exclusive keyboard focus, through gtk4-layer-shell, so it sits above fullscreen windows and bars.
3. Results come from providers. Each provider is one Rust file in src/providers/. Windows, apps, math, time, files, clipboard. Adding one is about 30 lines.
4. Nothing is polled. The window list follows Hyprland's event socket, apps are rescanned only when an applications/ folder changes, and unchanged rows are reused.

Measured on a laptop, release build, with ZUNDER_TIMING=1:

Plugins

A plugin is any executable in ~/.config/zunder/plugins/. Header comments configure it, and every line it prints becomes a result.

#!/bin/sh
# @zunder.name   Notes
# @zunder.prefix note
grep -ri -- "$1" ~/notes | head -50

Typing note groceries runs the script with "groceries" on each keystroke. For more control, print JSON lines with an action: run, term, open, copy, focus or fill.

{"title": "zen-bin", "subtitle": "pid 4242", "hint": "6%", "action": {"run": "kill 4242"}}

Themes

Twelve color schemes are built in. Click one, it applies to this page the same way it applies to zunder.

Your own theme is a file in ~/.config/zunder/themes/ with one @define-color line per color. Anything beyond colors goes in style.css.

Setup

zunder setup asks a few questions and writes the keybinds, autostart and theme into your Hyprland config. It takes over from vicinae, rofi or wofi, and --dry-run shows the changes first. By hand it is four binds:

-- hyprland.lua
hl.exec_cmd("zunder server")
hl.bind("ALT + TAB",         hl.dsp.exec_cmd("zunder switch"))
hl.bind("ALT + SHIFT + TAB", hl.dsp.exec_cmd("zunder switch-prev"))
hl.bind("ALT + SPACE",       hl.dsp.exec_cmd("zunder toggle"))
hl.bind("SUPER + V",         hl.dsp.exec_cmd("zunder show 'clip '"))

The classic hyprland.conf works too. Everything is stored in ~/.config/zunder/config.toml, and zunder settings opens a settings window for it.

Install