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:

• Is there a way to search a menu bar in Debian? - Unix.StackExchange
• How can I access menu bar items alike hud (unity)? - Unix.StackExchange
• HUD in other window managers (especially xmonad) - AskUbuntu

Solution 1

I prefer Synapse over Gnome-Do.

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

Solution 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.

Solution 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.)

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."

Comments

[Uri Herrera]

+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.

[James]

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.

[Redsandro]

So maybe a Gnome-Do plugin querying the DBus service would be an interesting goal for some developer. :)

[No Time]

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.

[Knowledge Cube]

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.

[Anderson Green]

Is it possible to get the list of commands from conky using a command-line interface?

[Maxim Brazhnikov]

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.

[landroni]

Then please rephrase the original question to make it clear. As it is, it is not. Basically, what is HUD?

[Maxim Brazhnikov]

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: 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.

[Maxim Brazhnikov]

Until unity 2d was dropped this was possible even with HUD itself (askubuntu.com/questions/202117/xmonad-with-unity-hud)

[Maxim Brazhnikov]

However there seems to be not much progress with this feature

[landroni]

Useful comments. Please edit the original question to reflect this.

[Maxim Brazhnikov]

Wouldn't this not be a bit impolite since it is not my own question? If not I will do it.

[landroni]

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.

[vmalep]

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.

[sondra.kinsey]

github.com/jamcnaughton/hud-menu seems promising; haven't tried it yet.

[lestcape]

2. The problem is that: You are refering a non update source of the gnome shell extension. Please use the developer site of the extension as a source instead: gitlab.com/lestcape/Gnome-Global-AppMenu